Page 1396 - Week 04 - Wednesday, 24 March 2010
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business owner who has completed the government’s new enterprise incentive scheme. The scheme helps unemployed people to set up their own small business. This is one way senior volunteerism can and will positively impact the economic life of a community. But there are others.
It would indeed be disappointing if we did not welcome experienced, senior members of our community in pivotal roles in education, in preventive health, in vital environmental protection, in sport and recreation, in arts and culture, to name just a few. Many settings which we normally see as the sole domain of young professionals are places where, if we ignore the skill and experience of older people in our community, we are in danger of sacrificing experience that cannot be replicated.
Speeches often refer to the idiom that it takes a village to raise a child, and I sometimes wonder whether in our education system, for instance, in the ACT and Australia-wide, we could benefit even more from the volunteer workforce of targeted senior citizens. My grandchildren benefit from older people reading to them at school, and I imagine that foreign language education could similarly benefit from senior volunteers volunteering in a school environment.
Telopea Park has demonstrated what can be achieved through drawing on volunteers from the community and the parent body. Over 50 parents/helpers come in weekly to assist with reading, both French and English, and assist in the library. Indeed, the Department of Education and Training’s working with children and young people’s volunteering policy, published in 2003, affirmed that volunteering was a highly desirable part of the ACT government school system, which is encouraged in a diversity of roles.
There is a significant amount of volunteering that occurs in the ACT. We all go about our day-to-day business, oblivious, I dare say, to the huge amount of volunteering, much of which is conducted by quite elderly Canberrans who help sustain and improve our everyday lives and our society as a whole. Indeed, the age groups 55 to 64 and 65 to 74 spend more time in voluntary work and care than any other age group.
Nationally, the value of volunteering to the Australian economy is estimated at in excess of $40 billion. Regular volunteers aged 55 years and over contribute an average of between 5½ and 6½ hours per person per week. This contribution to our economy through volunteerism is significant.
I would like to commend all those who volunteered through ACT COTA or other organisations to prepare for Seniors Week and will work throughout the week to make it a success. I would also like to commend all older volunteers in their day-to-day work and encourage them to nominate an older friend whom they work with for the volunteer of the year award.
I would like to close with a rather touching and somewhat amusing story that I have on good authority is a true story. When I was with Volunteering ACT and Volunteering Australia, one of the workers from the federal government shared a story with us that a woman had been concerned about her elderly mother and suggested to her elderly mother that she might like to move into a smaller, self-care
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