Volunteer West and Western Bulldogs Community Foundation: Working together for community
At Volunteer West we are grateful to be working alongside so many organisations doing invaluable work to serve the communities of Melbourne’s west. One such strong relationship is with the Western Bulldogs Community Foundation.
While the Doggies have been kicking goals on field in 2021, the Community Foundation have been just as prolific with their programs including their GOAL Mentoring Program.
At our VolConnect launch earlier in the year we welcomed Western Bulldogs Community Foundation general manager Kashif Bouns to share the story of his volunteer journey, and to detail the strong partnership between the foundation and Volunteer West.
Read the excerpts from Kashif’s stirring keynote speech from our VolConnect launch below:
On beginnings:
“Originally from Sialkot, a small city in Pakistan, I grew up in a tiny Gulf state called Kuwait. I loved growing up in Kuwait and Pakistan but once I graduated high school, I wanted to go somewhere new for higher education. The main options I had were the USA and UK. In USA they do not play cricket and the UK was simply too cold for my liking so I was in a bit of a limbo. To be honest, Australia was never on my radar. However, as it happens, I had a couple of Australians in my cricket team, and they recommended that I should think about Australia as a study option. The moment they mentioned Australia, I thought Melbourne and my eyes lit up as I remembered Pakistan winning the Cricket World Cup at the MCG in 1992. From that moment on, my heart was set on Melbourne.”
On Melbourne:
“I arrived in Melbourne in 2005 and felt a bit homesick at the start. To overcome this, I started volunteering for the student bodies to help other students which also helped me make friends quickly and I was able to settle I finished my studies in early 2008, times were good back then and the economy was booming with plenty of jobs infact I had a couple of offers. I decided to visit my family back home in Pakistan before taking a full-time job. And what a silly decision it was. When I returned to Australia after three months, it was a changed world.”
“If volunteers are the lifeblood of our community, organisations such as Volunteer West are at the heart of it.”
“The economy had busted and we were in the middle of a global financial crisis a bit like this pandemic. I struggled to find a job. But, I kept trying and in the mean while took any job that came my way. I did pizza deliveries, I worked in a factory, I was a security guard, and I also drove cabs. During this time, I continued to volunteer with several community organisations and cofounded Pakistani Students Association of Australia which now has 133,0000 members on their FB page as of this morning.”
On volunteering:
“Volunteering gave me an opportunity to reflect on my identity and ultimately embrace it with a passion. I became comfortable in my skin and found my purpose which was to serve the community by connecting people.”
On community:
“I realised if I was to truly fulfill my purpose, I needed to find a job in the community sector. The first job that I came across was at Cricket Victoria in their community department. I loved cricket and I loved community, and luckily, I got the job. My job was to take newly arrived migrants and refugees to cricket - I couldn’t believe I got paid for it. Once the cricket season finished I went on to work with Essendon during the football season. At that stage, I had never been to a football game and had only watched it in passing on TV a couple of times. I also knew which team not to barrack for as many a people had advised me early on that sooner or later I would find myself following footy, and when I do, to make sure I do not follow Collingwood.
“I made it clear to Essendon Football Club that I did not know much about the game, however I was willing to learn and willing to work hard. Thankfully, they took a chance on me and I was able to deliver a very successful program which led to my promotion, from where I went to few other roles within the AFL diversity unit and finally I took on my current role at the Western Bulldogs Community Foundation as a General Manager four years ago.”
On Volunteer West:
“By the time I arrived at the Doggies, I was a big believer in volunteering and was very pleased to see that the foundation had a thriving volunteering program. We decided that if we were to continue a proper volunteering program we needed expert advise so we reached out to Volunteer West who were very helpful in assisting us in revamping and refining our program. As we were working through this revised program we were hit by the pandemic. We needed our volunteers more than ever to make our communities stronger, during times of need, crisis, and isolation.
“So in partnership with Volunteer West we launched a digital connectors program where we recruited and trained volunteers who helped people in our community connect with others online. Imagine if you are an isolated person who doesn’t have digital literacy in the lockdown they didn’t have very many ways to connect with the outside world. Our digital connectors helped them connect digitally with passion and compassion. The feedback we received was immensely positive. Someone from Horsham told us that she was completely isolated and in a dark place but our digital connectors provided her a lifeline that helped her get through the lockdown. How wonderful is that and it was only possible because of the partnership that we had with Volunteer West.”
“In my experience if volunteers are the lifeblood of our community, organisations such as Volunteer West are at the heart of it. For a strong thriving community, we need volunteering to stay strong and for volunteering to stay strong we need to support volunteers’ managers and coordinators and organisations such as Volunteer West that build capacity in our community to help recruit, develop and retain our volunteers.”