Well-known local volunteer Linda Barry has been recognised for her years of dedicated service, by taking out the Senior Volunteer of The Year Award for 2017 for the Canberra Region. The award recognises outstanding voluntary service. Linda is a well-known strategic contributor and a grass roots volunteer for the St Vincent de Paul Society in Canberra and Goulburn. She has been helping tens of thousands of people in need since 1991. Albeit through her board representation, senior management of 25 Vinnies stores or one on one assistance and advocacy.
Linda continues to do whatever it takes to give people in need a “hand up”. Society members are passionate about helping people in need and work together in groups known as conferences. These conferences help people to overcome barriers impending on their ability to live the lives they deserve, as valued and active members of the community. This help may include addressing basic needs such as food, clothing, transport and healthcare through advocacy and support for survivors of domestic violence and abuse to access a safe, consistent and affordable living environment. As with all conferences, Linda’s work has varied on a case by case basis and has been geared towards addressing the needs of the “whole person” while upholding and restoring their dignity.
For 26 years Linda has continued to devote her time and expertise to listening, engaging and helping those in need, from providing a loaf of bread to advocating for and referring people to other services. Linda’s key achievements include Conference Membership, Conference Leadership, ACT Centres President, Vice President of Centres for the Canberra/Goulburn Territory Council Board, Director of Centres from 2012-2015. The last 26 years has seen the Canberra/Goulburn Society grow from being a series of individual centres of charity, to a professional organisation providing numerous programs to address not only individual needs but also systemic challenges to create and advocate for a more fair and just community.
Without Linda’s contribution such growth would have been much harder. The value of Linda’s work is twofold; while her work in the Centres has provided clothing, furniture and household items to tens of thousands of people in need, the money raised through the Centres allows key Society initiatives to continue to grow. The impact of Linda’s work has among other work contributed to Blue Door, a drop in centre that provides social inclusion, nutritious food, information advice, and advocacy referrals. Blue Door provides over 3000 meals and instances of assistance. Night Patrol provides mobile outreach offering refreshments and friendly faces to people on the streets 363 nights of the year. Last year Night Patrol provided over 12,000 instances of assistance.
For 26 years, Linda has dedicated her time to helping address poverty in the community. Linda has undertaken the task with both agility and dedication. On one hand she has been at the “coal face” engaging with those in need, one on one in the conference environment. Where the need has arisen, she has than dedicated herself to effectively running the largest chain of charity retail shops in the region, the multi-million dollar retail arm, of one of the region’s largest charities. As a volunteer and over and above her commitment as a conference leader and member, Linda ran 25 centres as a full time job for seven years. This was far more than maintaining business as usual. Linda embraced her appointment to facilitating the restructuring of the Society shops to become the Vinnies we know today. With the increase in Work Health and Safety legislation and the need for more accountability, the management of the shops needed to be professionalised. This was an immense change for the Society and Linda managed this change in the centres.
With administrative change came a far more modern and professional retail operation and with that, an increase in the surplus available to the Society to continue and enhance its work in the community. Linda has responded to the Vincentian call to action and asked the question daily “What must be done?” to alleviate poverty, to address the needs of the people and in turn the community. She continues to answer this question through her selfless actions. On any given day this could be supporting a person in crisis or leading the biggest centres restructure in the history of the Canberra/Goulburn Society. Whatever the ask, it has never been too big or too small for Linda to contribute her all. Well done Linda.
