Good news!! The self-titled Jewish Father Christmas, aka Josh Frydenberg, strikes again as he has chosen SCH for the fifth straight year to be the beneficiary of his annual Christmas Giving Tree appeal. This usually brings in 3-4k in cash/cheques/gift cards as well as a variety of foodstuffs and blankets/crockery etc.

As per usual there is a bit occurring throughout The Wonderful World of Servants. There are houses to be looked at and investigated that just might turn out to be where we will launch our women’s housing adventure; there are those with significant authority and skills who are keen to see Servants moving strongly into the future; there is a corporate org based in Kew who are keen to get involved with us in several ways; a local Foundation has committed funds to us for each of five years once we have the women’s house in our sights; donations and gifts from all manner of places continues to work its way into our coffers; now that we have the solar panels installed at Romana we are able to show off our work there – and that is leading to increased interest and $$ for installing solar at Carrical; we have met with both an Association and a Provider in recent times to discuss future plans; the Dept, in dealing with future thoughts re Carrical is as slow as a month of Sundays; I met on Saturday with a dynamic group of Swinburne Uni Business students who together form the voluntary group Business Without Barriers – a quite intriguing group of people who I can see we might utilize in some way in the future ………… the fun never ends!

All of the above both add value to the great houses we are currently running and our plans for future ventures. Exciting times.

1. Wednesday arvo Warren and I met with Lou, the vice-chairperson of Yarra Community Housing. There was some good conversation around how well rooming houses CAN be run. I imagine that this will be start of on on-going conversation between Servants and Yarra.
2. There have been one or two one off types of donations hitting our account in the last few weeks – including one from the City of Banyule. Sometimes I wonder how it is that people have heard about us.
3. Wednesday night this week Carrical hosted a Leadership Victoria dinner for their Folio participants. The evening was made all the more special with 2 resos presenting their stories and thoughts to the guests – one doing this for the first time. Both resos spoke brilliantly. One of Donald’s colleagues was a part of the group – which meant that I was my very best behavior!! I found some of the questions in the q & a part to be particularly challenging – in a very good way! It was a typical SCH/LV evening – wonderful.
4. Madeline returned to work today having been on holiday for nearly 3 weeks.
5. This morning I met with a representative from Women’s Housing Ltd (WHL) to ask for feedback on Servants’ thinking in regards to women’s only housing. It was a very positive meeting with the general view of WHL that our model should prove highly successful for a women’s only facility. It was a very encouraging meeting.

The powers that be from Coles have been showing some interest in supporting/partnering with Servants in some way moving forward. To date I have had a couple of intriguing meetings with the Manager of Coles Glenferrie, the Regional Manager and State Manager. The full story to date is too complex to tell in a Heartbeat – hopefully the story will develop sufficiently profitably for us so that I might share the story at committee one evening!!

General happenings:

• Our housing stats right now are even more spectacular than usual: Romana and Hamer have not had a vacancy since February and June respectively. Carrical has had 3 vacancies this new financial year for a total of 8 empty room nights.
• I spoke at the Boroondara Social Housing Advisory Committee this arvo – at this meeting I met the new manager of Ivy Grange ….. and was highly impressed with him.
• I met with our biggest donor –  by total funds donated (if I have my sums right this comes to $220,000 over the past 8 years) last week. He remains pleased with how we are utilizing the annual gift he gives us and will again be donating later this year.
• Some of you will have met Juan in person – if not you will have seen his story in Narrative. Yesterday he moved from Carrical to Parklands – an SRS located just behind Hamer in Childers Street in Kew. This is a very good move for Juan as he now requires proper care – but it was very sad to know that he could no longer cope in the environment of Carrical.
• Waiting list – at the present time we have a pretty tremendous waiting list of folks waiting, and keen, to be housed by us. What we really need is another house or two!!
• Solar power is now all systems go at Romana – 76 panels produced great amounts of electricity. I look forward to seeing the next couple of electricity bills for Romana to see what kind of savings are kicking in.

I have read many books over the years to educate myself further re mental illness. I believe once or twice I have Heartbeated about these.

I am currently towards the end of a book entitled ‘Madness: a memoir’ by Kate Richards. This is a brutally honest account of one woman’s struggle with psychosis over several years.

In terms of the stories I have heard from many resos, and reflecting upon the similarities between many parts of the book and Isabel’s personal experiences with psychosis – this book is a frighteningly real telling of many of the experiences that our resos endure.

I have the book if you are interested in having a look.

The Servants AGM this year will be held at 2.00pm on Sunday 9th October at Hawthorn West Baptist Church, 36 Barton Street, Hawthorn.

Rather than having a special guest from outside of Servants to talk to us we will be having a panel of VERY special guests – residents from our houses – speaking to us.

Following the meeting scones and jam and cream will be served. All a bit posh!!

A couple of dates for your diary.

Carols @ Carrical, version 3, will be held in the Carrical car-park on the evening of Sunday 11th December. Times TBC. We will once again be asking for entry by gold coin donation with all gate receipts being given to Hawthorn Community Chest.

There will be a Leadership Victoria, Folio Group evening at Carrical on the evening of Wednesday 14th September. Dinner will be at 6.00pm and the usual evening talks will be at HWBC from about 7.00pm. If you would like to join the throng for this evening (they are always very special occasions) please let me know.

It is nice to be back in the land of the Heartbeat. Last week I started back with working 3 hours per day – this week I will work a maximum of 25 hours.

Very simply, all I really want to say in this post is one very big THANK YOU to all in the Servants family for supporting me and my family so well thru some very difficult times over the past few weeks/months. It has meant a great deal to me.

Onwards …………

The Installation of Hope launch at Scotch College this arvo/evening was a success. Including half a dozen resos, 4 of whom were filmed for the project, there were about 30 people in attendance. I spoke/opened the exhibition – I have to say it looked very impressive. I managed to score a couple of speaking invitations whilst I was there. Following the exhibition at Scotch the Hope boards will be prominently displayed at the Servants exhibit at Council for Homelessness Week. I will make the 28 minute doco shot for this project available on our website in the very near future.

This Saturday evening OTG visit Romana for a Community Dinner. If anyone from committee would like to join us for the evening you are most welcome. The evening kicks off at 5.45pm and concludes about 8.00ish.

Ok, a little longer than a week – 8 or 9 days then.

1. 30th Party. Great!! Resos LOVED it. Connie, Madeline and I have spent a little time reviewing the event – picking out the good, the bad and the ugly. Overall it was an enormous success.
2. Josh F and Julie B @ Romana. Regardless of the result of the upcoming election this was something of a red letter day in our history (someone reading this please enlighten us all to the meaning of ‘red letter day’) To be able to have Josh introduce several of our resos BY NAME to Julie was quite something. I learned much from the occasion. Again, the resos were pretty excited by the visit.
3. I presented about the work of Servants twice this week – once to Strathcona Year 9 campus, Tay Cragen (ok, spelling error to be sure) and once to the Victorian Quilter’s Guild. The talk to TC was good, the talk to VQG was nothing short of spectacular.
4. Housing Blitz. This is the name that has been given by the Dept to their desire to give millions of bucks away to Housing Associations and Providers to help them put additional housing on the ground for women at risk of family violence. Amanda and I will be inspecting a property in the early part of the week ahead to see if it might be possible for us to house women at the site. Doubtless there will be significantly more details to follow here should we deem the site appropriate for our use.
5. $5000. One of our supporters is the former CEO of a big Australian corporate. He looks after us by dropping money into our account on occasions. A few days days was the occasion of him depositing 5k into our account. Nice!! In other money news Hawthorn Community Chest informed me they will be providing us with 3k towards our Romana solar installation project. Oh yes, the Dept informed me that our application to them for $$$ for the solar installation has been approved.
6. Budget. Warren, Isaac, Madeline, Amanda and I have now finalized the budget figures for 16/17. All will be revealed very shortly.
7. Most of the above named people have been hammering away at the Business plan for 16/17 too.
8. Low turnover at all the houses. Almost to the point of non-existence in fact!
9. People are now starting to show significant interest in Team Servants ’16. The event is Sunday 24th July.
10. Work on the roof/guttering at Carrical continues.

Even by our own standards this has been quite a few days ………………..

There have been a few happenings this week – I mean, there always are of course ……… but here is a little for your edification.

1. I attended a Philanthropy conference earlier this week. It was the first of this type I have attended in Melbourne, rather than Sydney. The content made me yawn. The networking was particularly good and I expect something of benefit to come forth as a result of this.
2. Josh F and the $300K election promise – you all know about this already. We are all systems go for the official announcement next Tuesday arvo at Romana.
3. Al, Ben and James – our new Housekeepers @ Romana – aka ‘The Boys’ – appear to be settling in to their new roles particularly well. It is very encouraging to see them in action.
4. Amanda and I attended the Housing Registrar’s Forum today. Held twice annually it is normally spectacularly boring alongside being a chest-beating exercise for the Registrar. Today’s session was better than usual. My personal highlight was answering one of the questions correctly in the Registrar’s Quiz (Q. Which band wrote ‘Whiskey in The Jar?) Amanda and I used the post Forum session to talk with our regulator, Christine, re a couple of issues.
5. As I think Warren might have informed you my wife, Isabel, is currently very unwell and in St. Vincent’s. Thank you to those committee members and staff who have supported me and my family to date thru this difficult time.
6. I hear there is a small gathering to celebrate a significant birthday on Saturday night!! I hope it is a spectacular success!!