Mitcham Library Service

The volunteers at Mitcham Memorial Library and Blackwood Library help the staff with basic library services. Volunteers are scheduled regularly when it suits.

Duties include:

• Shelving and tidying shelves
• Re-spacing and moving collections
• Special projects like shelf reading, labelling shelves and helping with the annual book sale
• Reaching for books on the shelves

Toy library

We loan toys to children up to 12, care providers, aged care groups and older people in the community.

Duties include:

• Checking and putting toys away
• Tidying shelves
• Cleaning toys if needed
• Repairing basic toys and boxes
• Engraving and writing on toy pieces
• Unpacking and putting new toys together
• Helping parents take toys to the car

When and where:

You can arrange to volunteer weekly, fortnightly or monthly for our Mitcham toy lending services at the Mitcham Memorial Library.

Our community centre volunteers welcome, direct and help visitors in a professional manner. They also help with enquiries.

Duties may include:

• Helping people using the community centre
• Assisting and directing residents and visitors
• Telephone administration: calls, messages and enquiries about our programs, halls for hire and other general queries
• Keeping the reception and waiting area tidy
• Taking people who may hire the facility on tours and undertaking inductions for new hirers
• Adhering Customer Service standards, EO principles and WH&S policies
• Creating a sustainable Mitcham by paying attention to the environmental impact of all our work practices
• Looking out for any risks, hazards and maintenance issues
• General administration: filing, mail, typing, photocopying, website browsing, maintaining noticeboard flyers and promotions
• Setting up and packing down for some events

When and where:

Our volunteers help out across our city in four hour sessions (minimum) on weekdays from 9am to 5pm.

• Cumberland Park Community Centre, 388 Goodwood Road, Cumberland Park.
• Mitcham Cultural Village, 103 Princes Road, Mitcham.

Mitcham Cultural Village gives visitors and people who live in our city the opportunity to take part in cultural activities by learning and sharing. Volunteers play an important role to help staff provide those opportunities.

Duties include:

• Telephone and reception enquiries
• Taking people who may hire the facility on tours and explaining conditions of hire
• Helping our staff coordinate special events and programs

When and where:

You can volunteer when it suits you, but you should be ready to attend one day a week for three hours at the Mitcham Cultural Village at 103-105 Princes Road, Mitcham.

Our community shed is inside the Mitcham Cultural Village precinct, and helps visitors and people who live in our city to learn and share across a range of carpentry-based activities. Volunteers help our staff provide these opportunities.

Duties include:

Working closely with the shed facilitator and other volunteers, duties may include:

• Guiding people to correctly use machinery and safety equipment
• Updating and maintaining attendance records and skills register
• Setting up policies and procedures so that the shed runs smoothly
• Inducting members in shed policies and procedures
• Suggesting improvements about the workshop’s layout and efficiency
• Reporting equipment breakdowns, servicing, and electrical testing to our staff

Local history volunteers collate both yesterday and tomorrow’s history. Our volunteers build up resources to enhance how much people know their city.

Duties include:

• Opening heritage research centre to the public
• Clerical working bee
• Clerical support
• Indexing local papers
• Transcribing oral histories
• Researching local and state developments affecting the our city
• Helping with community events and projects
• Mounting, filing and indexing papers and photos for the local history collection
• Collating community organisations newsletters and records
• Researching and collating records
• Copying records
• Helping to prepare information for community groups like local schools and kindergartens

When and where:

Volunteers are scheduled weekly, fortnightly or monthly (a mutually convenient time).

Mitcham Cultural Village: 103 Princes Road, Mitcham.

Hours are: Tuesdays 9:30am to 3:30pm for researchers, Wednesday 9am to 6pm and Thursdays 9:30am to 3:30pm (open to the public or by arrangement with our community historian).

We host two flagship events each year, plus multiple citizenship ceremonies. Volunteering could see you front of house helping guests or supporting the back of house.

Duties may include:

• Helping and directing guests
• Serving coffee and cake
• Packing gift bags
• Administration tasks
• Setting tables, doing dishes and tidying up
• Giving gifts to new citizens.

If you’d like to be a part of our events, get in touch with Nat at mitchamevents@mitchamcouncil.sa.gov.au or 1300 133 466.

Community bus

You can volunteer to drive our community bus or help us to provide this popular service for older residents and people who are transport disadvantaged. Our volunteers drive the bus on a rostered basis, take passengers to the libraries, local shopping centres and Westfield Marion.

Drivers pick up residents from their homes and take them to libraries and shopping centres. Helpers assist passengers with shopping bags, trollies, walkers and embarking/disembarking the bus.

Responsibilities:

• Making sure passengers are picked up and taken to their destination in a safe, comfortable and friendly manner and help passengers on and off the bus
• Every day, recording the number of passengers carried, the distance travelled, any mechanical problems or incidents on forms we give you
• Helping passengers with their personal belongings or shopping
• Telling bus passengers about our services and special events

Special requirements:

• Bus drivers need to have an LR or above class licence and a 'fitness to drive' medical certificate yearly

Where and when:

• Our community bus leaves from the Mitcham Community Centre
• Volunteers get reimbursed for their travel to and from the depot and are rostered weekly or fortnightly
• Volunteers should commit to a minimum of four hours per fortnight

Community connections

Our community wellbeing team provides transport or help to older people or younger residents with a disability participating in groups/activities in the community. This helps these people to connect with the community. We carefully match volunteers for similar interests, and we'll train them.

Duties may include:

• Transporting people who live in our city to and from an activity group
• Going to an activity/group with the person until they are happy going by themself
• Identify barriers residents may face with help from staff
• Helping the person join activities/groups/clubs with the goal of forming a sustainable and natural link to the activity over time
• Telling the community connections team about progress or barriers faced
• Volunteers aren’t required to provide high level or personal care
• You can partake in the activity/group matched to the resident

When and where:

• Volunteers are needed weekly, fortnightly or monthly depending on the activity/group’s frequency
• These activities/groups are usually in our city, but sometimes outside the council boundary
• We’ll take travel distance into consideration when we match volunteers with residents

Transport drivers

Our volunteer drivers use their vehicles to take older people in our community or younger people with a disability to the shops, or medical, therapy or any appointments for their wellbeing. This valuable service helps people living in our city to be independent in their own home and participate in the community.

Duties include:

• Making sure passengers are transported to their destinations safely and comfortably
• Helping passengers with walking frames/walking sticks or shopping bags
• Staying at medical rooms during appointments and then taking them home

Special requirements:

• Volunteers use their own vehicle and get reimbursed based on their engine’s capacity and distance travelled
• Volunteers need a 'class 1' South Australian drivers licence and their cars need to be comprehensively insured and well-maintained
• Volunteer vehicles need yearly roadworthiness checks

When and where:

• We’d like a minimum commitment of half a day per week
• The coordinator contacts volunteers with transport details
• Volunteers can be matched with a resident within their local area on a regular basis or be called when they’re needed
• We provide training and support

Lunch group

Lunch groups help older people or those with a disability to share lunch and friendship, listen to guest speakers, participate in gentle exercise, craft, entertainment and bus trips. This weekly outing is a great source of companionship and friendship.

Duties include:

• Helping to set up the room
• Kitchen duties: setting tables, doing dishes and tidying up lunch areas
• Helping participants and providing (minimal) assistance
• Joining in on our activities: art and craft, games including scrabble, cards, bingo, discussion topics, relaxation, fitness and guest speakers
• Sharing ideas for new activities and helping during organised outings
• Serving morning tea and lunch, and sharing lunch and conversation with the group
• Taking members to and from the venue in their own car

When and where:

You can choose to help out with select duties on a weekly basis:

• Tuesday group: 10am to 1:30pm at Cumberland Park Community Centre, 390 Goodwood Road, Cumberland Park.
• Friday group: 10am to 1:30pm at Blackwood Community Centre, Young Street, Blackwood.

Our volunteers help to maintain our city’s gardens.

Duties at these locations include:

• Weeding, pruning, mulching, watering, planting, fertilising, raking, and hoeing
• Digging holes and installing posts for signage
• Maintaining pathways
• Minor repairs
• Identifying and recording plant IDs
• Collecting rubbish
• Giving tours and holding open days for the general public

Gamble Garden

The Gamble sisters gifted this property in the 1980s because they couldn’t look after it anymore. Friends of Gamble Garden was formed in mid 1980 to restore and maintain the cottage garden area and expand the cottage garden concept over the grounds.

When and where:

• Volunteers meet every Tuesday morning between 9am to 12:30pm at the garden shed on the site
• Car parking is available on site
• The Gamble Garden is on the corner of Main and Dorham Roads, Blackwood.

Nellie's Garden

Mitcham station’s station master Bob Ellis designed and built this garden for his wife Nellie in 1959. Nellie suffered from agoraphobia and this garden was a gateway for Nellie to make her way back into the world. Nellie died in 1983, followed by Bob in 1997. We purchased Mitcham Railway Station  and the garden as a community project in 1990. Our volunteers are restoring Nellie’s Garden to its former glory.

When and where:

Volunteers meet every Monday 9:30am to 12:30pm at Nellie’s Garden, Mitcham Railway Station on Belair Road, Lower Mitcham.

Mitcham Scented Gardens

We developed Mitcham Scented Gardens in 1986 to celebrate South Australia’s 150 years. Raised beds and wide paths make the gardens accessible for people with a disability to enjoy the aromas, flowers and foliage.

The area promotes gardening to everyone in our community and encourages horticulture for recreational, vocational, therapeutic and rehabilitation purposes for disabled and disadvantaged people.

One of the garden’s key features is a nose sculpture by Neil Cranney. If you volunteer on this site, you have a unique opportunity to be a part of nurturing a lovely cottage garden and contributing to the disabled community.

When and where:

• Volunteers meet fortnightly from 9am at the Scented Gardens on a Wednesday mornings
• The Mitcham scented gardens are behind the Mitcham Memorial Library on Belair Road, Hawthorn

JWS Morris Reserve

The JWS Morris Reserve was named after local motor mechanic John Morris – a Councillor and Mayor of our city from 1974 to 1979. He was also a founding member of the Mitcham Air Force Association.

The reserve is adjacent to the Soldier's Memorial Gardens in Hawthorn, and follows the creek line through to George Street. The reserve has some significant River Red Gums scattered along the creek as well as some introduced trees and shrubs, and of course environmental weeds.

This reserve has been earmarked for redevelopment as part of the Brownhill Creek (Hawthorn reserves) reconstruction master plan, so if you’re volunteering here, your planting or work may be removed/lost. There’s no clear time frame for this master plan, but we invite volunteers to maintain the reserve in the meantime.

When and where:

• Volunteers meet quarterly on a Saturday from 9am at the George Street entrance to JWS Morris Reserve
• JWS Morris Reserve is adjacent to the Soldier's Memorial Gardens on George Street, Hawthorn

Woodlake Drive Reserve

Woodlake Drive Reserve features a duck pond surrounded by a boardwalk, an old stone bridge, playground, gazebo and open grassed area with native trees. The Woodlake Reserve Action Group work with Council to assist in revitalising the reserve.

When and where:

• Volunteers meet on site as needed
• Car parking is available on site
• Woodlake Drive Reserve is located adjacent to Woodlake Drive in Craigburn Farm

Urrbrae Wetlands

The Urrbrae Wetland is an environmental education project that improves water quality. We established it in partnership with the Patawalonga Catchment Water Management Board and Urrbrae Agricultural High School on land gifted to the school by the late Peter Waite.

We built the wetland in 1997 to control flooding locally, but now it’s a permanent wetland.

We’ve landscaped and revegetated it with indigenous plants grown from locally-collected seed. We’ve built an impressive education centre with a full-time teacher so students can observe and study this environment.

The friends of Urrbrae Wetland is made up of volunteers active at the wetland since its creation. They play an important role in enhancing and promoting this valuable environmental asset.

When and where:

• Urrbrae Wetlands on Cross Road, Netherby (next to Urrbrae agricultural high school)
• Volunteers meet every Tuesday from 8:30am to 12pm

Egmont Terrace

Hawthorn Railway Station was opened in the early 1900s. Each platform had a timber and iron open passenger shelter and there was a ticket office at the foot of the western platform which was manned at peak hours during the 1960s. The station closed on 28 April 1995.

Volunteers look after the verge of Egmont Terrace (between Sussex Terrace and Grange Road) through regular weeding, planting, mulching and watering. The verge features gingkos and bottle brushes as well as a colourful mix of geraniums, lavender, daisies and succulents. The volunteers are supported with equipment, vouchers to purchase native plants from State Flora Nursery, and mulch for the garden beds.

When and where:

Volunteers meet as needed. For more information call our volunteer coordinator on 8372 8860 or email lnorton@mitchamcouncil.sa.gov.au

Bush For Life

We support 31 Bush For Life sites across the hills. The Bush For Life Program restores and protects remaining fragments of bushland that are important to our State’s biodiversity. If you are interested in joining a group dedicated to rehabilitating bushland then the Bush For Life Program may be right for you.

When and where:

For more information and to get involved call Bush For Life on 8406 0500 of visit the Bush For Life  website.

We provide a Justice of the Peace service at the Mitcham Memorial Library and Tiwu Kumangka for our community.

JP duties include:

• JP service to the customers, signed and notated
• Record all JP transactions;
• Make sure customers understand their documents before signing.

Where and when:

• Mitcham Memorial Library: 154 Belair Road, Hawthorn). Open Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesday, Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays from 10am to 12pm.
• Tiwu Kumangka, 2 Young Street, Blackwood. Open Mondays and Wednesdays from 10am to 12pm.

Mitcham Trails

Volunteers build and maintain our trail network. We develop our trails to protect native trees and plants, and to help our community enjoy these spaces in a sustainable way.

When and where:

You can join community trail volunteer days on the scheduled monthly Saturday.