Advocacy, General

AA & Anthology

At the gym on Saturday I bumped into Anthony Antoniadis – one of the 2 Scotch College boys who worked so hard on Anthology waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay back in 2010/11. It was the first time I had seen him since the memorable Anthology launch in the middle of 2011. He was just as lovely as when I last saw him!! His family have stayed supporters of Servants in the intervening years and Anthony is keen to become involved once more. He had seen the Narrative book and loved it and was pretty excited to hear that his and Jeremy’s book (the other author) has now had 2 print runs of 5000 copies each.

Talking of Anthology – we are now down to under 1500 copies of the second print run. I am planning on running this total down close to zero via the show bags we will be distributing at Run Melbourne in July. At some point we will need to make a decision as to whether we desire to print more copies. For what it’s worth, my opinion is that it makes absolute sense to do so. Somewhat surprisingly to me there are people who prefer Anthology to Narrative – and not just Anthony’s folks!!

Hamer, Leases

Hamer lease.

The Hamer lease is, in true DHHS style, taking an absolute age to bring to the point of signing. This is frustrating. The Dept will send us a draft lease next week for our consideration. It will be a great relief when the lease is finally signed.

General

Social Work Practice in Mental Health book

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This Pulse is possibly more for Amanda, me and the Housekeepers – although good for all us to know. I received today the 2nd edition of Social Work Practice in Mental Health. It is excellent! Appreciating that we are NOT social workers there is a lot of great stuff in this book that should be of benefit to us in dealing with complex resos. There are terrific case studies – and even the briefest of glimpses into the book should be of great encouragement to us all. Please let me know if you would like to have a look. If we all find it a useful publication we could easily put a copy into each of the houses for reference.

Giving, Donations, Fundraising

$500

A supporter called me this morning to make a $500 donation. In the past 3 weeks we have now received 4 separate gifts of $500. If $500 is the flavor of the month in regards to amounts to donate to us ……………….. well, long may this continue!!

Development projects

The Old Vicarage

Amanda and I were today shown around the old vicarage at St John’s Anglican in Camberwell by the Vicar there, Fr David. And what a nice chap he is too! The building has loads of potential – we will have some interesting decisions ahead in regards to this property and the potential that lies within.

General, Uncategorized

Wood. Trees.

Sometimes all on the front line of our work are so busy with the day to day happenings of keeping the show on the road that we don’t take enough time to value the very special things we all witness on a day to day basis.

Sure, housing people well and ensuring people are well cared for is a wonderful thing in itself – but it’s the acts of kindness and generosity that we constantly see from residents that is just so very special to witness. I often talk about the ‘rare air’ that is breathed by all involved with Servants – and oft times this refers to some of the painful, the crazy and the quite frankly mind-bending things we witness and cope with.

Therefore, this is a post of encouragement to remind us all – committee members, those in the engine room of accounts, staff, Housekeepers and Amanda and me – all of us – our work, energies and passion are fundamental in allowing relationships and friendships to form, to provide people with a healthy framework in which they can recover from trauma and addictions, to be able to face looking themselves in the mirror once more, to have family relationships restored. What we do matters. It really does. Let’s not forget this.

Matt.

Giving, Donations, Fundraising

Run Melbourne update

Time for a Team Servants ’15 update

I think we are now 87 sleeps away from the event. The 300 t-shirts are on order. The Team tent for the day has been booked. 7 people to date have created fundraising pages – not a massive number at this stage but 7 more than this stage last year. Donations are trickling in. The first $100 donation arrived today. Being one of the ‘Special 35’ charities is clearly going to more than pay for itself based on the number of enquiries about our Team this has already created – inxs of 30 at this point. The trick here is to turn enquiries into fundraising pages. I recently spoke to a Captains of APS meeting re our Team and all these schools are going to support us in some way. Of all the schools who will be involved Scotch have been making the most noise to date – closely followed by Trinity and Strathcona. 2 local Rotary Clubs are heavily on board with RC North Balwyn not surprisingly leading the way. Connie and I are trying to make inroads into the local state high schools too – there is some success to talk of here with Balwyn High and MGC keen. A recycled brown paper bag style has been chosen for the show bags we are hoping to distribute on the day, 1500 max, and I am sourcing quotes for printing at the present time – a donor has generously offered to pay for all bags and printing. In total the event has 5000 people registered to run – they are expecting 30,000. If somehow we could have 300 people running for us on the day this would represent 1% of the field – this would doubtlessly create quite a splash. There will be significant efforts made to encourage as many resos as possible to participate. All in all, so far so good. There is still much to do as the event gets closer but I am as confident as I can be that we are nicely on track to bring in significant funds alongside gaining further exposure.

.

General, Houses, Uncategorized

AFL

I successfully applied to the AFL for 30 free tickets to an upcoming match at the MCG – Richmond versus someone I forget. 10 free tickets for each house. I am glad the Housekeepers will be sorting out who these tickets go to!!

General, Uncategorized

Spectrum Article

Last Saturday’s Spectrum pages in The Age contained an interesting article re outspoken author Peter SInger and his new book The Most Good You Can Do. I purchased this book a few weeks ago and it looks quite fascinating. The Age article has certainly made me think about donors/Servants/how we go about things. I will be happy to lend the book to any interested parties within the Servants family once I am done with it.

Romana

Romana. One Year Celebration.

It’s true!! We have been operating at Romana for one full year. I think it’s reasonable to say that our first 12 months there have been a great success. To celebrate our first anniversary of operation at Romana Brian and Pat Hall will be hosting an ‘open house’ on Sunday 17th May between Midday and 4.30pm at the house. There will be a lunchtime BBQ followed by an afternoon tea. If you are intending to attend please let me know via email for catering purposes.

Advocacy

The Mansion on The Hill

Two pieces of news out of Scotch College:

1. I have been approached by Scotch to consult with them re a small piece of theatre several of their students will be writing and performing in this year’s Fringe Festival – title of the piece is The Mansion on The Hill. I have now provided them with the title and the concept of the piece and the boys have now commenced the research/writing etc. It will be based around the 150 years of the Carrical mansion and will focus on a mirror that hangs on a wall of the mansion throughout this span of time reflecting the lives of all who have called the mansion home to show that regardless of circumstances and who we are that we are all really, fundamentally the same. This will not be a production anywhere near the scale of some of previous ventures – but I trust it will still be something Scotch/Servants will be very proud of – and I trust that a few people will attend the performance too!! The bottom line is that this will occupy very little of my time.

2. Scotch are seriously getting behind Team Servants ’15. It is very encouraging to see their enthusiasm.

Hamer, Uncategorized

London buses.

The similarity between London buses and vacancies at Hamer is strong.

You wait and wait and wait – and then they all come at once! In the past 4 weeks we have seen one female reso transfer to Romana (good move), one male move to aged care (good move) one male move to palliative care (good move) one former male reso move in and move out within a couple of weeks (just sad) and one male purchase a one-way ticket to his homeland of India (sad and potentially quite catastrophic move)

5 resos out of 28 moving on (mostly for excellent reasons) is a big number by anyone’s standards – and especially be ours. Of course, we have filled the vacancies very quickly and the empty room night total for Hamer for year to date is only 27.

 

Finances, General

Office Manager

Our search for an Office Manager concluded this morning when Madeline Tucker accepted our job offer. Many, but not all of us, will already be familiar with Madeline. This is a very exciting appointment for Servants and we very much look forward to Madeline joining the ‘engine room’ of the organization in a few weeks time.

Uncategorized

Manse In Camberwell?

Last weekend Matt and I looked over a disused manse at Camberwell junction. Its needing some TLC in a great spot with lots of land. It has enough accommodation for about 6 residents and a live in housekeeper. Not quite what we are used to … but we expect to bring some kind of report on the place to our June meeting. The fact that we found out about this at all is a testament to our close relationship with Boroondara council who recommended us to St John’s church.

Hamer, Leases

Council and the Hamer lease.

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On Monday evening Warren and I attended the Boroondara Council meeting where the issue of the future of the Hamer Court lease was dealt with. Councilors unanimously voted in favor of accepting Council officers recommendation that they be allowed to finalize the lease with the Dept. It was all very straightforward – but still very gratifying to see all the hands be raised!

If we are not quite ‘done and dusted’ we are most certainly well on the way! When all signed, sealed and delivered the new lease will take us from 1/7/2015 thru 30/6/2020.

BTW – if anyone wants to see a meeting run with chilling efficiency I suggest you go to a Council meeting. They are brutal affairs!!

General

Trouble. Baptcare. Council Meeting. Resos. Clothes. Runners. $$$$. Plants.

This week has held some challenges. There has been a particularly difficult situation to deal with at Carrical which has greatly taxed resos, Mark, Amanda and me. I will not go into details here – suffice to say the past 24 hours have been challenging!

Earlier in the week I met with Jason Perdriau who heads up Baptcare’s asylum seekers housing project.  There are some clear synergies, as well as many marked differences, between his work and ours. Mark and I are planning a trip out to see Baptcare’s asylum seeking housing project in the near future.

Next Monday 23rd February is the date of the Boroondara Council meeting where we will learn if we are to be offered a new 5 year lease for Hamer. Warren and I are probably going to attend this meeting – as spectators only.

This week has seen donations of clothing and cash come in.

Next week one of the ladies from Romana, Ziva, moves out. Ziva will be missed. She is the only Slovenian national we have housed to date. We have another lady all ready to replace her. Also next week we see our former reso Thahir move back into Hamer as he replaces a gentleman who is moving on to something he perceives as a positive step forward in his housing journey.

Run Melbourne plans are progressing nicely. To date we have 9 runners who were previously unknown to Servants running/raising funds for us on the big day. I believe our $2900 investment in becoming one of the ‘special’ charities for 2015 will pay handsome dividends.

In our weekly meeting this morning Warren and I were looking at our bank accounts and realized that since the start of December we have transferred nearly $60,000 across from our cheque account into our higher interest account. This has been done steadily over the weeks in lots of $5000 and $10,000. Encouraging.

Romana resos Paul, Richard and Jaimie, unofficially known as ‘Servants Grows,’ are doing a steady trade via donations for their propagated plants thru Bar Ristretto. Their work will become a little easier in the coming weeks as Rotary Club of Hawthorn installs a propagating greenhouse for them at Romana.

 

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