Teenagers Support Their Community

Teenagers Support their Community

Interchange Outer East understand the valuable contribution that teenagers can make to their community and will promote their recreation volunteer program in the eastern suburbs of Melbourne throughout September 2010.

Interchange Outer East has produced a new web friendly flyer that aims to attract teenagers to volunteer on recreational programs with children who have a disability.

Executive Officer of Interchange Outer East, Fred Brumhead said, “Teenagers have a lot to offer and our volunteer program harnesses their skills and provides a way they can make a positive contribution to the lives of others as well as their own.”

The recreation volunteer program at Interchange matches a volunteer to a child with a disability on weekend and school holidays for day activities and camps.

Interchange Outer East Volunteer Coordinator, Emma Kay said, “Volunteers provide safety, supervision and support a child to have as much fun as possible and participate to the best of their ability. We always need new volunteers particularly with the high demand on our services.”

Fifteen years ago Interchange Outer East recreation services provided 40,000 hours of services to support to families and children with disabilities, this has doubled to over 82,000 hours in 2010 and now includes recreation services to young adults with disabilities.

Interchange Outer East has 200 active recreation volunteers of which over 50% are teenagers aged between 14 and 19 years.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) suggests that in 2006, 5.2 million people of the Australian population aged 18 year and over participated in voluntary work. They contributed 713 million hours to the community and 43% of volunteers were aged between 35-44 years. However, these statistics do not represent that younger volunteers aged between 14-19 years throughout Australia that give up their time to volunteer.

Volunteering Victoria Vice President Tara Cantwell said, “These statistics don’t reflect the growing trend in teenage volunteering, there are many teenagers out there doing great things in their community and it’s a great credit to Interchange and other community organisations that appreciate and respect the contribution teenagers can make.”

Swinburne Public Relations students made recommendation and drafted variations of the new flyer as part of their studies, elements of the students work was used in the final artwork.

The recreation volunteer flyer is here: click here for the poster or here for the flyer

By Rebecca Gallaher