There is some good progress to report in regards to Servants outsourcing the majority of our maintenance requirements in order to be prepared to sign the new General Lease in time for 1st July.
Amanda and I met with Yarra Community Housing prior to Christmas and today with t2m, the maintenance arm of St Kilda Community Housing. Both groups are more than well equipped to deal with our maintenance needs.
We aim to bring a proposal to committee at the 10th February committee meeting.
I met with Kate and Tony from LV this morning to further the schools leadership program concept and establish the next steps. A very positive meeting it was too. By the February Servants committee meeting LV are hopeful of having the proposal thru the LV committee – we will also have draft financials available by this time. So far, so good. It is fair to say that LV are as excited by the potential of this project as I am.
The other piece of news from this meeting is that LV will be running for Team Servants ’14 next year and advertising this fundraiser thru their extensive mailouts to their members.
As you might remember Carrical recently hosted a group from Medibank’s Leadership training program. It was a spectacular day that saw 18 emerging Medibank leaders being taken out of their comfort zone by being placed into Carrical for half a day to learn about a different aspect of society. The day concluded with Amanda and me talking to the group at length.
The feedback from the day is worth sharing with you all – 5 major points:
1. Servants clearly does what it says on the tin.
2. They admired our creative view on solving problems/raising awareness for issues close to our hearts.
3. Our bad days our worse than theirs, apparently! They will never moan again, apparently, having heard some of our stories!
4. They were astonished that we ordered a review of our difficult time at Canterbury. In their experience it was far more common to excuse themselves from cock-ups and sweep problems under the carpet rather then learning from your mistakes.
5. The belief we have in educating young people to make decisions as to how the vulnerable of our society will be cared for in the future; it was the element of ‘seed sowing’ that really impressed them.
We have since entertained 7 folks from Medibank for their Volunteer Day. This day was also a raging success as we looked to see where Servants and Medibank could work collaboratively together.
For those of you residing in Boroondara there is a nifty little mention of Servants on page 13 of today’s Leader. Josh F is visiting Carrical this Thursday morning for the handing over of the Christmas goodies/cash.
As we all know we budget for 365 empty room night per annum per house – a total of 730 nights. To this point in the financial year we have amassed a total of 17 empty nights. That’s right ……. 17.
There have been 4 exits in the same period of time; 1 death, 1 eviction, 1 reso moving to higher care and 1 reso making a ridiculously bad decision to leave Hamer to live in an old folks place. Christmas is an unsettling time for resos as a rule and we normally see one or two seek their fortunes elsewhere at this time. Still, the stats are great and are backed up by the fact that almost no rent is being missed at this time. It is a healthy position to be in and one we will continue to work hard at maintaining – especially as the task of filling Romana looms.
I had a meeting this morning with Zoe Bradley – the editor for Narrative. Progress is good to date. There is considerable interest from schools in the publication. We have set all the key dates in place now for the project. All quite exciting!
I’m really pleased that Warren has opened this blog/site up to all now. I hope that it will be a tool that will prove useful to us all.
It was lovely to see so many folks at the Romana brekkie this morning. Thanks for coming. It was also lovely to hear your enthusiastic comments about the house itself. For me, it was lovely to look around the house knowing that the lease has finally been signed and that we will ACTUALLY be housing people there in the early part of next year.
Looking forward to the Romana Breakfast tomorrow morning. Pleased that many people will have their first look at the new house.
Mike did a nice job today updating the Servants website and Facebook page. Nice to be all up to date. Had a very pleasing email in the week from an individual congratulating Servants on the content of the website. The updated website was also the first time we have shown the Team Servants ’14 design to the world! more nice work from Mike here with the design – I especially like the ‘running for respect. dignity. hope.’ bit of it.
Warren and I joined the other 3 members of Operation Toshack today in the City today for lunch. The value that Andrew, Dom and Sam continue to add to Servants is significant. to have such people on board with us, believing in our model of housing – it’s pretty special.