Mary interview for Connect

Mary works for Interchange Outer East, specializing in helping young people find work or volunteer opportunities. She has been working with Andrew, a shy 22-year-old, for the past 18 months. They have tried various work ideas, and currently, Andrew is interested in being a removalist assistant. Mary supports Andrew by helping him build confidence and learn tasks, as well as providing transportation. Mary found the volunteer opportunity through the NOCS office at Canara Community House. Non-profit organizations benefit from volunteers like Andrew by building relationships, getting tasks done, and promoting diversity. Mary has seen positive changes in Andrew's mental health, well-being, and confidence through his volunteering. In Mary, so tell us a little bit about yourself. Okay, so where do you work and what drew you into the field of disability support? I work for Interchange Outer East and a couple of years ago I had a career change and I studied community services and out of that somehow or other disability services kept popping up and it's a really positive environment to work in. So yeah, so this is where I've ended up. So I actually work doing specialist services which is helping young people find work or volunteer opportunities. So that's the area that I work in. Fantastic. So tell us a little bit about Andrew, your client, and how long you've been working with him and what his interests are. Andrew is a young man I've been working with on and off for the last 18 months. He's very shy, he's 22 years old at the moment and we've tried a lot of different work ideas that he might like to do. We've done some gardening and some cleaning and currently we're doing some delivery so he feels like he would like to be a removalist assistant. So you know, doing house removals or that kind of thing. So at the moment we're doing transport, transport and delivery. So we pick up some items for an organisation and we drop them off as well. So there's a Christmas appeal going, I think it's called Share the Joy, technically, and that's what we're doing at the moment. So we're providing all their transport needs. Fabulous, fabulous. And so how did you find out about the opportunity? Okay, so I spend one day a week at Canara Community House and the NOCS volunteer, those who volunteer for NOCS, office is situated there and so I'll always pop in and see what they've got that might be workable for one of our participants. And how did you find a volunteer for NOCS to work with? Excellent, that was great. So they usually give me a list of what's available and then we might research a couple of them and see if there's anything that will work for us. Well it's been pretty successful with you so far with Andrew and placing him in a volunteer opportunity. So you've told me what Andrew's doing with the Share the Joy appeal. How do you have to support Andrew who is fully shy and has a disability as well? What is your role in that? Okay, so my role would be to help him build confidence and obviously help him learn the tasks that he might need to do. So someone might give him a direction and he might get some of it but he might not get all of it. So I'll just help support him following through with that direction. Maybe give him some ideas of how things might work a bit better if that's what he needs. He doesn't drive so I'm the driver and he's the jockey. Yeah, and I might prompt him how to approach people maybe because we see a lot of different people and due to his shyness that can be a bit hard. Yeah, so we might talk on the way in what we might say when we meet the people. How can other non-profit organisations or people that need volunteers, how can they benefit from volunteers like Andrew and I thought what are some of the great qualities that people with disabilities have? I think it's a win-win all the time because the people in the organisation get to know the participants. They generally build good relationships with them. They often get tasks done that other people might not want to do and it just helps the person, the participant, be out in the community and that can be really life changing for them to just be out and about and see other people. And I guess it helps people working in the organisation interact with different people. It's always good having diversity in your organisation, that kind of thing. Yeah. And have you seen any positive changes in Andrew through his volunteering, the 18 months that you've been working with him? What are they? So I think listening to Andrew about what he actually wants to do, not what might be easy for us. It's not too foreign because that can be a bit of a sticking issue sometimes. And then when someone's doing what they love to do, then they're really open to learning and that really helps their mental health really and their well-being as well as their confidence.