Making a Real-Life Impact
The group of volunteers from New Life Impact Community with a very happy Goodies Op Shop manager, Bev Watson.
A few helping hands made a big impact when a young group of volunteers came by.
New Life Impact Community are a church in Sydney with a 1000-person-strong congregation.
Each of these congregations split off into smaller congregations and each of these carry out mission and volunteer work to help local, national and overseas communities.
This group of young people are primarily university students who have taken two weeks out of their holidays to come to Adelaide and assist where they can, particularly with their sister church Korean Adelaide Presbyterian Congregation.
In two weeks they will assist charity groups and churches, making a big difference along the way.
Having come from the Salvos ‘DUO’ project just days before, helping the homeless and disadvantaged, they graced the grounds of the Clayton Wesley Uniting Church on a sweltering day.
Our arts organisation, The Manse, gained some much-needed assistance preparing their shed for a new arts project and workshops starting there in the coming weeks.
The group also agreed to letterbox the local area with flyers for a refugee picnic on Australia Day run by Uniting Communities.
But the biggest impact was made in our Op Shop; Goodies.
After a considerable break over Christmas and a huge influx of donations, Goodies’ shed was at capacity and they couldn’t possibly take any more donations.
Volunteer illness also meant the shop was unable to be stocked as regularly as needed, and the workload was building up.
Eight willing and uncomplaining helping hands took to the op shop and within a few hours, Bev Watson, Goodies’ manager, had a stocked shop and an empty shed.
She was even able to take down her sign reading “unable to accept donations for 2 weeks”.
Bev was wrapped; “they’ve made a huge difference to the shop and the volunteers here, they’ve really helped us start the year with a bang,” she said.
Thanks again to Ebenezer Gualberto, Jessica Park, Sarah Park, Alex Chang, Linda Shon, Karen Jang, Esther Lim and James Kim – you’re welcome back anytime!