We had 20 or so people come along, some of them existing volunteers keen to meet each other and learn more about our campaigns, and some of them newbies keen to start volunteering at Environment Victoria. We’ve been working hard to work better with volunteers this year, so it was great to see that existing volunteers are finding it rewarding, and new volunteers are wanting to give us a hand.
The evening started with an optional training session on how to speak to people at a stall – a skill which our climate volunteers have been putting into practice at their weekly stalls. The stalls have been popping up on street corners and at markets around Melbourne, demonstrating that there is in fact support for a carbon price. Fifteen or so volunteers are now confident and ready to take to the streets.
Volunteers at Environment Victoria range from people writing the occasional letter from home, to people running whole projects from the office, to our “Tuesday volunteers” who’ve been coming in to do things like stuffing envelopes since last century!
If you’re keen to join our team of volunteers, drop us a line and let us know what you’d be interested in doing. If you happen to have any handy skills (graphic design? PhD in river science?), tell us about that too. We don’t do any hands on activities like tree planting, but we do a whole lot of other stuff. Right now we particularly need people to print out our petition against a new coal power station being built, and to spend a bit of time getting your friends to sign, leaving copies at your local childcare centre/school/workplace, or helping on our stalls to get the message out even further.