2 nice stories to share from the recent round of AFL matches.

Ben Palmer, one of the 3 new Housekeepers at Hamer following the Halls’ departure, took Big Peter from Carrical to see Essendon play North Melbourne on Saturday arvo. That same evening one of the teachers from Trinity, Tom, took Phil from Romana (who talked at the recent Strategic Day) to see Richmond and the Swans.

Servants – creating community, being community, keeping the community in community housing.

A reminder to all that the Servants 30th Birthday party is on the evening of Saturday 28th May at Hawthorn West Baptist Church.

It is 5.30 for a 6.00pm start. The formal part of the evening will be from 8.00 thru 8.30pm. Josh F’s office today confirmed that he will be our key guest speaker for the evening.

if you are intending on attending can I please ask you to ensure that you book tickets (no charge) at trybooking.com/LCSD       This will greatly help us with quantities for catering.

This is an alcohol free event and children are most welcome.

A big THANK YOU to all committee members, Amanda and Madeline for your ‘above and beyond the call of duty’ weekend/Monday evening commitment to Servants.

Personally I thought Sunday was an absolute triumph of an occasion. I had been looking forward to the Strategy Day for weeks ….. and I was not disappointed. I feel very excited that we now have a very specific new housing venture to work towards.

It is always lovely to receive encouraging comments about our work. I always hope that when such comments are written/expressed about our work that EVERYONE connected with Servants is encouraged by them – as it is surely how we all work and strive for the goals we set ourselves that allows such comments to be made?

The words below are from our Facebook page – written by the sister of one of our long-standing Carrical resos  after she had seen Narrative. I trust that you are as encouraged by these words as I am.

‘Yesterday I had the privilege of visiting Carrical House again. My brother Barry is a resident at Carrical and he is seen here with Matt Maudlin, CEO Servants Community Housing.This is the most incredible organisation based on love and caring. Reading the recently published book “Narratives” about the residents’ lives of the and the impact telling their stories had on the young people who interviewed them is totally inspirational. Servants Community Housing is a beacon of hope: a pragmatic and humane approach to solving the problems of those who are vulnerable. Thank you Servants and the young people who you involved in the daring Anthologies and Narratives project.’

There will be a full moon this Christmas Day – whatever one things in regards to full moons/behaviors etc I can tell you that I am always aware when there is one – usually by means of Housekeepers reporting less than idyllic resident behaviors!!  This being said everyone is surviving the silly season. We currently  have 88 of our 89 rooms full – just one female vacancy at Romana going spare at the present time.

Our houses have been INUNDATED with food and pressies this year – this happens every year – but not to the extent it has occurred in 2015. People are increasingly generous to Servants. Of all the generosity that has come our way this Christmas season it was perhaps the food gifts that came via our friends at Berry Street that were perhaps the most eye-opening. The quality and quantity of food delivered for the 3 houses was incredible. Yesterday Josh F dropped off his Giving Tree goodies to us – clothes/crockery/baby formula (!!)/various foodstuffs/blankets/gift cards et al. Today I picked up the cheques that had been written to Servants c/o The Giving Tree – $6500 in total. All very handy. A handful of other donations have arrived too – about $500 in total.

Hamer Court today saw Phase 1 of the new alcohol rules come into play. As of midday today residents are welcome to consume alcohol within the privacy of their own rooms but not in any public areas. From 1st February 2016 there will be no consumption of alcohol on the premises.

Romana staff took possession of their new freezer yesterday – courtesy of our friends at The Sunshine Foundation. Sadly it arrived a little beaten up and damaged.

Last Wednesday the Carrical car park became the venue for a sit down bbq dinner for the Carrical resos and members of Rotary Club of Yarra Bend. It involved some logistical challenges but was an enormous success.

Short of something  dramatic occurring within The Wonderful World of Servants in the next 31.5 hours that desperately requires Heartbeating this will be my last Heartbeat pre-Christmas. Thank you for reading my updates throughout the year and an even bigger thanks to those who have replied/commented. I find these tremendously encouraging.

Matt.

The second iteration of Carols @ Carrical occurred on Sunday evening. It was one more triumphant evening for Servants. To see the resos of Carrical, Sing Australia, Hawthorn Community Chest, Rotary Club of North Balwyn, neighbors, friends and supporters all coming together on a beautiful evening against the equally beautiful backdrop of the Carrical mansion – well, it was quite something. A true community event. I estimate we had a turn out of about 200 people – a few less than last year. On Sunday night every man and his dog was holding an inferior carols event elsewhere – so numbers wise we probably did ok. Although money has not been counted at least 450 bucks was generated for Hawthorn Community Chest – this is not to be underestimated as this makes many of our Carrical resos feel really good about themselves/Servants. Local member for Hawthorn, John Pesutto, spoke brilliantly on the night and he and Big Ted B joined the choir for the second set. Resos are already planning a still bigger and better event for 2016.

News in no particular order:

• At the time of writing we have one vacancy at Romana.
• The total of empty room nights for the fin year to date is higher than expected – but far from catastrophically so.
• MLC presented us with a gift of $1500 last week – and gave me all of 90 seconds to talk to their staff about Servants!
• Amanda and I continue to plan the way forward in terms of future Housekeeper arrangements – particularly in light of the Halls departure in mid-2016. We are encouraged by the possibilities ahead of us at the present time.
• OTG – Old Trinity Grammarians – have been hosted by each of the 3 houses at recent Community Dinners. Their interest in our work is evident.
• Our major donor recently blessed us with a gift of $30,000.
• We are waiting to hear from St John’s Anglican in regards to if they are keen to present us with the opportunity to continue talks with them about their old vicarage.
• Andre has now finished his interviewing for the Essence of Servants Project. We should have his finished report before Christmas.
• Planning for this coming Sunday’s Carols @ Carrical is underway. It should be another good evening.
• Please remember that we will be hosting our committee and staff Christmas ‘do’ this year as a brekkie at Niche on Bridge on the morning of Wednesday 16th December.
• Believe it or not one can now register for Run Melbourne 2016! Madeline and I will be spending some time working on the on-line set up for our participants for this event in the near future.
• I met with the Dept last week to discuss General Lease developments. All good.
• The Dept has informed me that the lease between Dept and Council for Hamer has now been signed. We should expect to see the Dept/Servants sub-lease any day now for our review prior to signing.

The news of the past week is a follows – in no particular order:

• Amanda returned, safely, from her adventures in Nepal.
• The Hislops returned from a week away. Ben Palmer deputized splendidly at Carrical in their absence – as he always does.
• I attended the Housing Registrar Forum – a twice annual event. Complete, utter and abject waste of time. 2.5 hours of my life I am not getting back. Purely a chest-beating exercise for the Registrar to tell a disengaged audience how terrific they think they are.
• An unknown donor gave us $1000 this week – other gifts this week included a Christmas Tree and furniture.
• The October finance figures were released this week – they look terrific. An operating surplus of $27,000 for the month to give us a YTD operating surplus of just inxs of $90,000 to the end of October.
• In mundane yet still essential news we ordered 20 new mattresses.
• Andre met with half a dozen resos this week to complete the interview phase of his Essence Project. He is now in the process of writing up his findings which he will deliver to us in early December.
• I met with a couple of Uniting Church pastors from a church community in North Balwyn who are keen to see how they might become involved further with our work.
• A group of 9 Year 9 boys from Trinity Grammar hosted a BBQ lunch at Romana for resos.
• This week has seen one new reso move into each of Romana and Carrical.
• With one or two minor exceptions all 3 houses are really settled at the present time.

An update: it has been a busy week of coming and goings as several resos have transferred from one house to another (lovely that we now have the scope to do this to house people still more appropriately) and a few resos have moved on to pastures new. In my last Heartbeat I mentioned that we have a Hamer reso we are keen to see move on as this reso’s influence on the house is somewhat detrimental – this remains a work in progress. This week I showed 2 workers from McCauley Women’s Housing around Hamer and Romana – they were given much food for thought with how our model operates; I am hoping we can develop this relationship still further. I caught up with my main contact at Council this week to talk about the now doomed Servants/Boroondara Cares housing venture – I will allow our President to elaborate on this development via a Heartbeat if he deems it necessary. I have had further discussions this week with potential Housekeepers of the future. Plans are now well developed for Carols @ Carrical on the evening of Sunday 13th December. A gentleman we have been in discussions with for several years in regards to the possibility of him becoming a reso ……… finally moved in this week. Hurrah!! It’s always lovely when you see a plan come together. Amanda remains in the tranquility of Nepal and the Hislops return from a week’s well deserved break on Saturday 6th. We have now been officially confirmed as the recipient for the 4th straight year of Josh Frydenberg’s Christmas Giving Tree Appeal – the Jewish Father Christmas indeed he is!! That is the update.

Heartbeats have been few and far between of late. For this I apologize. So a summary is necessary:

The gentleman (less than gentlemanly really yet I remain committed to keeping myself nice) we have trying to evict from Carrical has finally vacated. This is such an enormous relief to residents, staff and management alike. We are currently in the process of ‘encouraging’ a Hamer reso to move on – this too has the potential to get a little ugly.

Amanda has been on holiday for just over a week now and has 2 more weeks until she returns to the frontline.

A $10,000 donation was recently received – and we heard in the last few days that our application for funding for 20k of solar panels/batteries etc was successful. This was granted from Josh Frydenberg under the Government’s Building Stronger Communities Program. Hurrah!! The plan is to install the system at Romana where we think this will enable us to save approx. $11,000 in electricity costs.

I check our bank account every morning – just to keep abreast of where things are at – and was pleasantly surprised this week to see that the total of our accounts was just 13k short of $500,000. Some of us reading this will remember Warren’s now infamous ‘Shark Graph’ way back when. We have certainly come a long way since that time of financial stress.

HAMER LEASE!!!!! Ladies and gentlemen, I am thrilled to announce that the good folks of Boroondara Council and the Dept have finally struck a lease for 5 years at Hamer Court!! we now await a sub-lease to be sent to us for perusal prior to signing. Hurrah!!

Servants International Community Housing – SICH. Last week we finally made it internationally as Mark Hislop and I hosted a group of Singapore public servant delegate types at Carrical. This was a site visit for them as a part of their week long fact finding visit. We were asked to host them as we our model is unique and super community based. we certainly seemed to make a good impression upon them. It’s good to know we are now big in Singapore!!

One of the original Voices actors fro Scotch in 2009, Simeon, visited Carrical today to interview me and a couple of resos for  Uni journalistic piece he is compiling about how Voices in 2009 helped to shape Servants. One thing was abundantly clear – that project certainly helped shape him into the man he is today. We are planning a Community Dinner for next year with all concerned from Voices 09. Should be fun!!

The big picture of Servants 31/10/15 is exceptionally god. Yes, some serious challenges are ahead – particularly in regards to the issue of the difficult Hamer rese – but we have many reasons to feel pleased with where we are right now in the scheme of things.