The enjoyment of volunteering

Early last year, Futures 5 commenced a new Community Engagement position at Enjoy Church.

This placement is within a modern style Church environment that has a program called ReStore on a Friday. ReStore is a drop in style service that provides free barista coffee, a free meal, new and donated clothing for $2 and food parcels. In addition, they provide free English lessons for many community groups.

The venue allows for a very social environment that is welcoming to all, whilst it is providing assistance to people who are at risk of homelessness, on unemployment benefits or people who are financially struggling in the current economic climate. Additionally, ReStore has helped refugees from Afghanistan and Ukraine to set up their lives in Melbourne, this has been particularly interesting for the group as they learn about the Ukrainian crisis in their weekly Behind The News/Current Affairs program and has consolidated Futures 5 learning.

The group commenced during lockdown and could only provide restricted service in the car park where we wore masks and maintained social distancing measures to ensure everyone’s safety.

Now the program has returned to inside services and the group have been able to see how the ReStore program works inside the venue. The tasks that the group participate in include recycling the boxes the food is delivered in, repacking bulk goods such as rice, powdered milk, bread, teabags and sugar into small packs for individuals to take home.  The group also restock shelves, carry bags to customer’s cars, take coffee orders and make coffee, clean up in the café areas and help to sort the donated goods.

The group are always welcomed and are now very much part of the team having recently completed three weeks of team building exercises. Each Friday the group are excited to get to Enjoy Church and are often exhausted and proud of all of their hard work supporting people in need. It is a wonderful feeling knowing that we can give back to other in the community.

If you would like to know more about our Community Engagement program, or have a placement that might be suitable for us then please get in touch.