Page 5886 - Week 14 - Tuesday, 7 December 2010
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the members of the society for the important work that they do, helping people at the end of their lives to end their lives with dignity and with the least suffering possible.
Schools—volunteers
MR DOSZPOT (Brindabella) (5.18): In my capacity as shadow education minister I had the pleasure of accepting an invitation from the committee of the School Volunteer Program ACT Inc to attend their end of year celebration on Thursday, 25 November 2010. The end of year celebration was to recognise the contribution of the many volunteer mentors this year that work with the School Volunteer Program and have done so for a number of years.
The School Volunteer Program started from very humble beginnings and has now something like 200 people from the community, former teachers and retired people who assist with mentoring young children in many of our government schools throughout the ACT.
The patron for the School Volunteer Program is Major General Michael Jeffery, our former Governor-General, and he addressed the gathering at the school and spoke about the work that the School Volunteer Program volunteers provide. He said they
… provide a wonderful service to our young by committing time, friendship and interest, to improve scholastic outcomes, increase self esteem and develop a greater intergenerational respect, benefiting not only the individuals involved but the wider community. For our dedicated mentors, the personal satisfaction of positively influencing our youth is both tangible and long term.
Major General Jeffery spoke about encouraging members of the community, schools and businesses to actively support the School Volunteer Program, and it is a very worthwhile endeavour for all concerned.
I would like to echo what Major General Jeffery has said and I would like to offer my personal thanks, and on behalf of the community, for the wonderful selfless work that people like Jennifer Muir, Mal Ferguson and around 200 volunteers contribute to the many government schools around the ACT. Those schools and the children are the beneficiaries of the mentoring and the assistance that are provided through the selfless work by so many people in our community as school volunteers to assist the School Volunteer Program in the ACT.
I commend them again for all the work that they do. Hopefully the government will see fit to give them a little bit more support than they received this year. They are very much in need of some facilities at the moment, somewhere where they can meet and somewhere where the volunteers can get together, and I will be talking to the minister for education about hopefully getting a little bit of support for their activities.
I would just like to close by commending again the work carried out by the School Volunteer Program ACT Inc.
Question resolved in the affirmative.
The Assembly adjourned at 5.21 pm.
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