TAMWORTH’S Salvation Army has put out a call for more help in delivering the services our community so heavily relies on.
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It’s in desperate need of more volunteers, a position many groups across the region would also find themselves in.
The Leader does many stories on these organisations and the people who help keep them operating.
From the sporting committees that keep our youngsters active and the groups who look after the welfare of our elderly residents, to the organisations that assist the disabled, and those who give their time to keep our public spaces looking their best, volunteers are genuinely the backbone of our communities.
And in doing all these stories, you generally find the same faces in a lot of cases, and that the ones working the hardest are usually among the busiest.
They don’t complain about not having enough time, they just get on with it and find some more hours in the day.
It was announced by the state minister for volunteering last week in Moree that the town would hold an expo devoted to the topic later in the year, a perfect opportunity to bring the subject into the headlines at a time when we’re all being told we need to tighten our belts.
And when it comes to belt tightening, there’s no better example than the federal budget, which has started to be discussed in recent weeks.
While May still seems a long way off, the focus is even more intense, given this is an election year.
The NRMA and Australian Local Government Association have both announced in recent days they have sent off their budget submissions to the government, outlining where they think the government should be directing its spending.
At the same time, the government is under pressure – although it maintains it isn’t – to match Labor’s recent promise to honour the full six years of the Gonski education funding agreements with the states.
Local MP Barnaby Joyce made very clear last week the government would have to be satisfied that coming to the party on Gonski didn’t mean a budget blowout.
What all of this tells us is that government money will become increasingly hard to come by – it already has – as time goes on, and communities will have to do a lot more with a lot less.
Volunteer hours will become all the more valuable as we look to these people to prop up the social and community structures we consider vital threads in the fabric of our community.
We can no longer afford to rely on someone else stepping up to the plate – it’s up to all of us to do our bit.