By Callum Ludwig
Healesville Football Netball Club has shown great solidarity for their community with a huge drive donated to local charity HICCI.
Players, officials and members donated a massive supply of non-perishable food items and toiletries that will go to those in need in the community.
Healesville FNC President Toby Millman said from the club’s point of view, they always want to give back to the community.
“We want to give back to the community that gives to us. We’re all about supporting the community, making sure that we’re looking after the members of our community so that we can potentially have supporters or players or people that are interested,” he said.
“We were thinking that we hadn’t done anything, and we had a number of the young fellas who had seen a couple of homeless people around town, and the drive was [Football Secretary] Kylie Rowe’s idea.”
Healesville’s Senior and Junior Football Clubs are partnered with HICCI, who in particular are the major sponsor of the juniors. Healesville FNC promotes HICCI initiatives through their social media platforms to help tap into the community and ensure everyone is supported.
Mr Millman said as a club, they work on two key behaviours, care and respect.
“I talk about care and respect all the time, what we want to do is we want to support our community and to be a meaningful part of the community,” he said.
“We love being back together, it’s the strongest part of the community, we expect to do 120 meals tonight and from a community point of view, that is just fantastic. Anyone’s welcome at our club, no matter what walk of life you come from.”
HICCI played a large part in securing a grant to provide new training tops for the Under 14 and 16 Healesville Girls sides who merged with Worawa Aboriginal College’s teams this year to ensure no girl missed out. The ‘Eagles Hawks’ are flying, as a result, this year.
Executive Officer at HICCI Alison Gommers said it was an amazing effort, especially given how much everything has gone up in price.
“It was extremely generous, if I had known how much everyone would bring, I would’ve brought a trailer.,” she said.
“It was just about getting the message out there, that we’re here to help and to encourage people to tell others about HICCI and they give us a ring if they need any support, and how lucky we are to live in such a generous community.”
HICCI provides a number of services for those in need such as emergency relief in times of hardship or crisis, transport assistance for essentials such as grocery shopping or medical appointments, interest-free loans and weekly community meal Dinner at Darron’s.
Ms Gommers said the drive really did display Healesville’s values of care and respect, particularly after two years of a lack of community interaction and local sport.
“This was putting into practice what their thoughts are and showing that dramatically. It’s really important and there are many people in Healesville that I’ve found through the Covid time are elderly and isolated, so it’s important to look out for your neighbours and make sure they’re okay,” she said.
“We always have roles for anyone who is interested in volunteering, and we find people really enjoy the interaction with others. Particularly the drivers love hearing people’s stories when they take people to appointments, they get a real kick out of that, and spend quite a bit of time with clients, they get to know them very well which is very special.”
