Today 5 pretty switched on students from the Melbourne High Philanthropy Club spent several hours at Romana involved in a few volunteering tasks. It was a good day, some manual work was achieved, but, more importantly, we now have several young men who have had their eyes opened to the world of Servants and what we do and why we do it. During the final part of the day I took the guys to Carrical to meet a few residents – this proved to be a positive, thought-provoking exercise for the students. I have little doubt that some good things will happen for Servants as a result of today’s investment.
Melbourne High
A group of boys from Melbourne High are visiting Romana on Easter Sunday for a volunteer day. This is our first foray into the world of Melbourne High – hopefully many good things will eventuate from it.
Narrative
Narrative book progress this week has been nothing short of spectacular! 2 stunning interviews occurred – credit to the students for coming to the houses during their holidays to push on with the project. I met with Printer Chris yesterday and everything is on track from the printing end of things. I am hopeful that he next 2 weeks will start to bring in some significant dollars for the project.
Team Servants ’14
TS14 has enjoyed a very positive week. The wisdom of having an all singing, all dancing database is now really coming into its’ own. The database has over 500 names on it now – and is increasing all the time. One of the lovely things re the database is how easily we can slice and dice names/events/histories to ensure that mail outs are absolutely tailored to specific groups of supporters. Much kudos to Nicole for her work on the database. All on the database have now been contacted re TS14 and the feedback from emails that were sent earlier this week has been terrific. Many people are committing to sign up and a handful of people have contacted me to say they will bring family, friends and colleagues on board to swell the team numbers. Amanda and I are meeting with senior school staff from MLC next week to talk re the possibility of their students and staff joining TS14. 3 months and a week out from the event and I am as happy as I could be right now with the progress being made.
Be warned! Connie is still to talk with committee and members of the association in regards to getting involved!!
The week in Romana
The week just ending has been the busiest week at Romana to date. All week the house has been full of builders, tilers, painters, Rotarians, folks coming for interviews etc. It has been a veritable hive of activity. The one possible delay at this stage is the delivery of white goods to complete the Managers and Residents Kitchens. I am still hopeful of moving the first reso in on Wednesday 30th April – but this might now be delayed by a few days. The progress is immense – day by day we are just seeing the house taking shape between our eyes – it is an exhilarating process. The generosity that so many people are showing Servants is very touching; we have been given truly great deals by several tradies – all of which helps to keep the costs down and helps us to come in under budget.
Announcement
I am very happy to announce that Mark and Ann Hislop will be the new live in House Managers at Carrical; replacing Amanda when she exits Carrical in early-mid July. I think this is very exciting news for Servants.
Meeting with Matrix managing director
Matrix on board were contracted to help manage our financial operations mid last year. To date they have not met expectations and David served notice on them a few weeks ago.
This week I met with the founding managing director, Morri Young, to share our observations with him. It was a friendly, but frank and fierce, conversation over a couple of hours. Morri now understands our business better than anyone at Matrix. And he was very apologetic about how they had serviced us.
It’s now David’s call whether Matrix has a place working with Servants, but I am glad we have worked it through with them in relationship and honesty and self reflection.
Warren.
Thanks Connie!
This morning at Hawthorn West Baptist Church Connie did a FANTASTIC job in advertising Team Servants ’14 to the assembled masses. Lots of encouragement was given to people to sign up, run, get fit and generally support this wonderful Team! If anyone happened to take a photo of Connie this morning in her running gear please Pulse it – to give the true idea of the lengths that Servants committee members go to in order to get their point across! Thank you Connie!
Postcard link
Below is the link to the Team Servants ’14 postcard – thanks as usual to Mike for making this look excellent. As some of us will be aware the sign up process is P A I N F U L!! Thanks too for Grace for the time invested in ensuring the clarity of the sign up info. Please feel free to advertise/distribute the postcard to interested parties. I know that Connie will be talking with committee/members/HWBC in the near future about plans for the Team.
$6450
I had a phone call from Ngaire (pronounced Nyree) from Hawthorn Rotary this morning. They will be giving us $6450 for a new freezer at Carrical, posh raised garden beds at Romana and industrial sized slow-cookers for each of the 3 houses. The new freezer for Carrical is particularly important.
Good news!
I was also informed that they have approved their Club funding the set-up costs of a ‘Men’s Shed’ type facility at Carrical. This will equate to a few thousand dollars.
Rotarians at Romana
Here is the newsletter that Rotary have published about their volunteering at Romana!
Romana Opening Ceremony
The official opening for Romana will be the lunchtime of Saturday 17th May – at Romana, not surprisingly!
Further details will be forthcoming – but this is the date to put in your diaries.
Printer
Following the financial/Narrative book quantity decisions taken at last night’s extraordinary committee meeting I talked to Printer Chris from Southern Color this morning. He remains excited about the job/publication and is now working on figures etc to make things work. All good. In many ways little changes from my end – I still intend to hunt each and every dollar down for the project so that we are not out of pocket and the Yajilarra money can live to seed still more adventures for us.
Older women and housing
This is from today’s Age and confirms what I have been hearing all over the place of late. At a recent speaking engagement I was asked when Servants would open a community house specifically for older women – the need is that enormous.
First choice. Room 7.
The first room at Romana was chosen by a resident today. Natalie chose Room 7. We are on our way!
In other Romana news Brian and I had a site meeting today with Architect Steve and Builder Jeff. Everything is on track for Project One Builders to hand the house back to us on Wednesday 23rd April. We are currently on track for taking in the first residents on Wednesday 30th April.
I am working towards a tentative Opening Ceremony type of event on Friday 16th May – with a BBQ at lunchtime.
Romana resos
At some stage in the very near future I am going to have to stop interviewing people for Romana. The referrals from workers have been quite outstanding – with very few people that I would not even consider housing. From this week future residents are coming back to the house to start choosing rooms. And just FYI, there are currently 2 females who look set to move in from Opening Day.
Crazy stat
A crazy stat for your viewing pleasure. The last resident movement in or out of Hamer was in late November last year. We are now a week into our fifth month with no movements. This stat tells us many things – the fact that we are largely putting appropriate people into the houses, that our model is working well and that there is a serious lack of quality housing ‘out there’ for our type of resos to access.
Harvard Club of Victoria
I heard this morning that I have not been offered an interview for a scholarship from the Harvard Club of Victoria.
Recognizing that bringing Romana onboard has plenty of costs associated with it I have already commenced looking elsewhere for funds to help pay for the tuition at Harvard.
Fruit. Urban Seed.
In the last few days I sent our live-in House Manager PD at Hamer Court to Urban Seed, at their request, for them to send out to their networks and alumni to see if there would be any interest at all in any of their contacts taking over from the Donohoes at Hamer at the start of 2015. I am informed from US that the response has been very positive in terms of quantity of people who have contacted them displaying some interest. Good news!
New Social Housing Framework
The link above is to the recently released document from Minister Lovell on Social Housing. A bit of a lengthy read – but might be of some interest to some. There is talk of transferring 12,000 public housing units into the domain of community housing. The early indications are that the Housing Associations will be the groups targeted/expected to take on these properties.