Not everyone reading this post will understand the great hatred I have for all things VCAT and especially the muppets who serve as Members at the VCAT Residential Tribunal. Suffice to say my loathing of the aforementioned in strong. Very strong.

Earlier this week I received an email from a chap who had seen the Narrative book, fallen in love with Servants and was enquiring as to how he might volunteer and make a financial donation.

I met with him this morning. He was a lovely geezer, which was odd, because when he is not working as a lawyer he sits as a VCAT Member for Residential Tenancies!!!!

If I am in the middle of some bizarre dream please do not wake me up ……………….. the irony here is quite delightful.

I met with Hugh for an hour his morning at Carrical. He me some resos, had a look around, grilled me about our history and plans for the future and generally believed that we are offering a great service to our resos.

Next week he starts his volunteering with us.

Comments are most welcome!!

As some of you will be aware I have been far from convinced that the need for housing single women is as acute as the media has portrayed of late. So to get to the bottom of this issue I contacted some trusted sources within housing/mental homelessness/hospitals at the beginning of this week to see what they had to say.

The situation is as grim, perhaps even more grim, than the media suggests.

Perhaps my most trusted source at the present time told me that ‘if Servants opened up a women’s only house using the model of our other houses it would be like all her dreams coming true.’

Significant food for thought here I suggest ……………………

On Tuesday morning I entertained 3 Police officers from Dandenong at Carrical who came to learn about best practice in ‘old style rooming houses.’ In their own area they have been experiencing worrying levels of violent incidents between resos in such facilities. They were fairly blown away by what I, and a few of our resos had to say about how to run such a community brilliantly. We left them with much food for thought and we are already looking forward to being invited down to Dandenong to talk further with Police, local Council, rooming house operators et al re our ways of doing things.

A friend of Servants has given us 10 tickets for Melbourne City’s Boxing Day game at AAMI Park. Melbourne City play soccer in the A-league for the uninitiated!

2 of the tickets have now gone – 8 remain. Please let me know if you would like to attend and I will get tix to you.

The Romana resos also received 10 free tickets.

A reminder that the Servants end of year ‘do’ is occurring on the evening of Monday 15th December at HWBC commencing 7.30pm.

Dips/cheeses/beers/wines etc will be provided to this very low-key, yet significant event.

Spouses/better halves welcome too!

I felt hugely honored on Thursday evening to be presented with a Paul Harris Fellow Award from the Rotary Club of North Balwyn. I have spent enough time around Rotary Clubs over the past few years to realize that such awards are enormously coveted within Rotary circles. The award was completely unexpected to me – up until last night I believed the award was only open to Rotarians! As honored as I feel personally by this award I believe it reflects significantly upon the work of Servants and all that we have been able to achieve to date in our various partnerships with Rotary. This award will certainly open up a further door or two within Rotary circles.

A supporter of Servants who works as an organizational psychologist for Medibank spent his annual volunteer day working with me yesterday as we examined a whole range of issues surrounding Servants involvement – actual and potential – with schools, service clubs, corporates, fundraising, community dinners, events, creative projects, social enterprises and the likes. It was a particularly good day and has left me with much food for thought.

Some kind of deadline is fast approaching Housing Providers who have yet to transition to HPF Maintenance Option 2 (I do not know the full details because it has no impact on us as we secured ours months ago.) I know this as suddenly we have become flavor of the month with Providers as the Dept advises Providers ‘to contact Servants to see what information they might be willing to share with you.’ It’s nice to think our work was good enough to be seen as a template for others. And of course, yes, I am very happy to share with other groups.

It has been a couple of weeks since I last Pulsed.

• Since that time there has been a very comprehensive meeting of the Risk sub-committee where agenda items included our credit card policy and a review of the budget to date.
• My annual performance review was carried out by Connie and Steve – a reasonably painless process from my perspective.
• I have hosted several meetings with individuals interested in learning more about our work.
• Donations continue to arrive – since I last posted we have received donations totaling about $5000 from a variety of sources.
• Amanda has performed a make-over of the Servants office – it now looks terribly efficient and business-like.
• The houses are, as always, full, and the demand for accommodation with Servants is just enormous.
• Boroondara Council and Hawthorn Rotary Club are hosting Christmas events for our residents in the weeks leading up to Christmas.
• Plans for Carols @ Carrical on 22/12 are progressing nicely.
• I started my Uni studies this week – my first unit is Management Concepts. So far so good.
• Amanda is currently having a week’s holiday. I head off for a break on 28/12.
• A reminder that our Servants Christmas gathering is on the evening of Monday 15/12 at 36 Barton Street.
• That is the news!!

I recently attended the ‘final’ of the Impact 100 award. It was intriguing! As I expected not one of the 4 finalists was making a difference in terms of finding a solution to homelessness – they were all doing great work in terms of providing services to those on low-incomes. I met several Impact 100 people who told me that they loved our Buckminster Fuller Project but that it was just too ‘out there’ and ‘non-measurable’ for their needs. I am following with a couple of contacts made on the night and will be intrigued to see where this might lead Servants.

Last week I enrolled in an Open University Australia Business degree thru Griffith Uni in Qld. My first subject commences 1st December.

Last Friday Carrical and Servants hosted a Deloitte ‘Impact Day’ event. Rather than asking the volunteers to clean windows and pull up weeds we hosted a half day for them (for the second consecutive year) whereby they shared a lunch with the resos and then heard from me and several years in an educational session at HWBC. As with last year the day was a great success and we very clearly have some new supporters as a consequence of this event.

It took 12 days from the Narrative launch to a copy finding its way into the hands of former PM John Howard. The story behind this will be posted on FB and the website in the coming days.

Boxes of Narrative continue to disappear at a great rat of knots. The feedback to the publication has been overwhelmingly positive.

All the houses are full. The empty room night for the houses combined for year to date total 26.

Plans for the Carols @ Carrical event on the evening of Monday 22nd December are well advanced now. This resident inspired idea is aimed at raising funds for Hawthorn Community Chest.

There was a Residents House Meeting last week at Carrical which was a great success – the Hamer resos have their turn in the week ahead.

The burger joint Grill’d in Glenferrie Rd, Hawthorn has 3 charities it is supporting in November – their customers vote for the charity they would like to see $300 donated to. The ‘losing’ charities each receive $100. To date Servants is winning this event by a landslide!

I am taking a few days holiday at the moment – so will recommence Pulse posts when I return to work on Monday 17th November.

I would be very interested in hearing your reflections/comments on the Narrative launch last Friday – and especially who you talked to and their comments.

The comment above was said by a friend of one of us as she entered The Great Hall last Friday. A very interesting comment – and one which was a compliment.

Personally I thought it was a terrific evening – with little down side to it. Across both launches on Friday we received over $2700 in donations – and the money is still trickling in – alongside several new connections that were made and many more folks expressing their desire to be still more closely linked to us.

A BIG ‘thank you’ especially to Connie for her countless hours of planning, plotting, organizing  and, ultimately, delivering the event so beautifully.

Episode 120 of the allegedly great TV series Prisoner was shot, in a very small part, outside Carrical. One of the resos told Mark this recently – we checked it out – it is true!

On Tuesday Pat, Martin and I attended a half day D&A training program organized by CHFV. It was one of the better training sessions and we all learned a lot. The presenter was so impressive that I am considering inviting him to Servants to run a session with residents.

Tuesday night was another epic Servants/LV evening. The participants were 17 folks from Boroondara Council participating in an LV led leadership program. It was an emotional evening – the participants were challenged, hopefully changed, by what they saw and heard. Our relationship with LV continues to bring great results for us.