Christine Kazub says: "Volunteering is in the blood"
"The best advice I'd give is to start volunteering for one event. It will lead to another. Put your name down and go for it. If you find yourself with a few days or weekends free, there are many organisations needing help. Volunteering might lead to a full-time job or just a huge circle of friends. Volunteering gives you a sense of pride and a feeling of community. You may lose wages but you certainly gain a lot of insight into how organisations are run. It's a win-win situation. There is no downside. Knowledge broadens your mind and money isn't everything!"
Christine Kazub has made remarkable use of her familial predilection of taking care of people during 30 passionate years in volunteering. She watched her migrant parents support their own Polish community in Sydney by watching over the elderly and supporting church activities. She said: "Being European gives you a bit of a grounding here, being part of other communities and developing other friendships." Christine stepped into volunteering like a professional turning up for work. She loved it then and especially loves it now because she said: "I am now working for one of the sporting bodies that I volunteered for during the weekends. I work full time for the cycling body, running their office and administration and being personal assistant to the CEO and race entry manager."
Volunteering has been slotted into her life mainly at weekends and during annual holidays because of full-time work in the travel industry. But it was always the sporting events that absorbed her energies.
"I loved sports and I played a lot of sports. When I was still at school, they were looking for people to help at tennis tournaments and I was a very big tennis fan. I started ushering and worked on the information desk. From there, I looked after the actual usherettes, and became their manager and placed them into their spots."
"Later I worked at all the tennis events, such as the Davis Cup, the Federation Cup, the NSW Open and the Olympics. I worked on the help desk and provided customer service for tennis events at the Paralympic Games, and the Commonwealth Games in March 2006."
"I've worked in disability sports with the Wheelchair Association looking after the sponsors, the athletes themselves and some of the other volunteers and the administration desk. Later, I worked in swimming doing marshalling, administration, and looking after volunteers. Now I work in cycling and that's where I've ended up working full-time doing volunteer service, athlete service and registration."
Christine came to The Centre for Volunteering recently through the City of Sydney Council which needed volunteers for fundraising on Red Nose Day and other special events including New Year's Eve city customer services. Involvement in swimming and cycling masters events followed. That meant working with volunteers as well as patrons, running the athletes' help desk and green rooms, making sure they were all happy and well and their reservations were completed.
"I've gained business and computer skills by being a project manager. Being involved in the organising side of volunteering was very important when a full-time position came up."
"There is a special camaraderie among volunteers. Even though you are not getting paid, you are still a part of the workforce. You win and the organisation wins because you are helping them out and you are getting something back from the camaraderie and seeing what the events hold in store."
Recently, Christine's time spent volunteering has been cut back due to work commitments. "When I accepted this position they said I'd have to curtail a lot of the volunteering but hopefully I'll be able to amalgamate volunteering on weekends as I've always done."
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