In Australia, this week is designated National Volunteer Week. For the St Vincent de Paul Society, every week is volunteer week as, without the 50,000 volunteers and members that turn up each day, week or when called, to help the poor and marginalised of Australia, we would just not exist.
The St Vincent de Paul Society is one of the largest volunteer organisations in the country. We are a charity started by volunteers in France and currently operating in 147 countries, with about 1.3 million volunteers.
Our volunteers work in our Centres, Conferences, aged care facilities, homeless facilities, they staff our night patrols (taking food, drink and comfort to those on our streets each night’), they visit our hospitals and prisons, they work in our offices.
As a Society we are volunteers, and on behalf of the St Vincent de Paul National Council, I wish to take this opportunity to thank each and every one of our volunteers for their hard work, their dedication and love for those less fortunate than themselves.
Frederic Ozanam, our founder, said there is no work of charity foreign to us. And that is our guiding principle.
Anthony Thornton
National President
Canberra
