I love complaining about winter but also love wintertime! Being able to sit in front of a fire with a good book – or just staring into the flames.
I hope you will forgive me, but I am going to talk politics today. I believe in democracy and what that means to every man on the street. I have never belonged to a specific political party because I felt that that would limit my ability to exercise my ability to express my honest opinion about issues.
Democracy is a term that is thrown around and is very similar to statistics. You can interpret what you believe the terms means and translate it in such a way that it actually undermines the true principal of the concept. According to the Oxford Dictionary, democracy means: ‘a system of government by the whole population or all the eligible members of a state, typically through elected representatives’. As you can see, the term is broad and open to interpretation.
When I nominated for Council, my only aim was and still is, to represent people in the community. To listen to their needs and fears and wants and then try to do something about it. But as you all know, there are rules and protocols that need to be followed and adhered to, otherwise you could end up with complete anarchy.
Volunteers and volunteering are the heart and soul of communities. I spent an afternoon working at the canteen at the Carisbrook Recreation Reserve recently. It was such an energizing and uplifting experience watching the players, spectators, parents and young people interact. The enthusiasm and “joie de vie”. To think that everybody at the Recreation Reserve that day acted as a volunteer in some capacity or other on that day!
I identified the need to empower volunteers and volunteering groups very early into my career on Council. This led to me developing and presenting Grant Writing Workshops for volunteers. It has been said that there are two things that make people walk away from volunteering: when it becomes a financial burden for volunteers and secondly, groups are working in silos and the silos should be broken down. It seems that with these workshops, both these aims will be met.
The third Carisbrook Community Conversation will take place on the 19th July 2023 at the Carisbrook Fire Station in Green Street, Carisbrook. Our special guest for the evening will be Emilie Byrne. She is Council’s newly appointed Community Recovery Officer. I have invited her to come along to meet Carisbrook residents and talk about her role.
