By JESSE GRAHAM
FROM playing bingo and games with residents, helping with arts and crafts, or just being there to have a cup of tea and a chat with, Lesley Wilkinson is an essential part of Healesville’s Monda Lodge.
Ms Wilkinson, who has been at Monda for about eight years, spends her Thursday afternoons at the aged care facility, playing games, running craft activities, and talking to residents.
She sat down with the Mail on Thursday, 5 May, to talk about her time at the lodge and volunteering, ahead of National Volunteer Week, which runs from 9 to 15 May.
Ms Wilkinson said she signed up as a volunteer after visiting the lodge with the Healesville Spinners and Weavers group, where she is currently secretary.
“We came here on a visit, to demonstrate our crafts one day,” she said.
“When you do that, no matter where you go, you’re always asked, ‘Will you come back?’, or ‘Do you have something to offer?’ – I said yes.”
When asked how long she had been volunteering there, she said she had lost track, but put the number at either eight or nine years.
“We’ve been trying to figure that one out,” she said.
“It’s all good – you wouldn’t come back otherwise.”
Her visits usually involve playing games with the residents – she was playing bingo with a group when the Mail visited – or showing them crafts, or simply just having a chat over a cuppa.
She said that she often talks to older residents about their lives, and how the conveniences of today – such as quick clothes drying – were foreign thoughts when the residents were growing up.
“We share a lot,” she said.
“The ladies had wood-fire stoves to tend to, and coppers in their washing.
“It’s not like when you put something in the drier and it’s dry – things were quite different life-wise.”
Ms Wilkinson is one of more than 900 residents that volunteer their time for Eastern Health, and one of the thousands of volunteers Australia-wide being acknowledged as part of National Volunteer Week.
She encouraged others to have a go at volunteering, saying that she came with the goal of giving to others, but gets plenty back in terms of reward.
“You’re giving, but it’s what you get back that’s the thing – the feeling that you get back,” she said.
“I feel like people are scared of volunteering, because it’s a commitment, but you only do what you can and, generally, organisations look after you.”
For more information about volunteering, visit www.volunteeringaustralia.org
