Volunteering: Why we can't survive without it
Melanie Oppenheimer, UNSW Press
If volunteers on any single day in Australia decided not to turn up to coach local sporting teams, stuff envelopes, make cups of tea, plant trees or take minutes, then we would all feel the effects very soon. In this new book, fourth generation volunteer and well-known commentator Melanie Oppenheimer takes the first comprehensive look at why Australians give so much of their time for free.
Australia is a nation of volunteers. Without volunteers our cultural, social, political and economic lives would be dramatically different. Still, as Oppenheimer points out, the invisible work that thousands of Australians do for each other and their communities are deemed 'unproductive' in national account keeping and mostly left out of government philosophies. Only the ALP had a policy on volunteering leading up to the 2007 elections, and despite the new government having a parliamentary secretary, the minister for volunteering resides in another portfolio. This book is both a history of the largely untold story of volunteering in Australia, as well as a powerful call for valuing volunteers much more than we do.
Timely, lively and unflagging in its coverage of an extraordinary range of organisations and individuals, Volunteering attempts to define what's unique about 'the Australian' way of volunteering.
The book will be launched on Thursday, 2 October by NSW Minister for Volunteering, Graham West.
Melanie Oppenheimer's great-grandmother was founding President of the Country Women's Association in NSW in 1922; her grandmother formed and ran the Red Cross Voluntary Aid Detachment in her hometown during WWII; and her mother was recognised for her volunteer work with an Order of Australia in 2003.
Taking up their mantle, Melanie created Vita Activa, a series on volunteering as part of ABC Radio National's Life Matters program. She has written extensively on 20th century Australian history, especially on women, volunteering and war. Her books include All work, no pay: Australian civilian volunteers in war (2002), which was shortlisted for the NSW Premier's History Awards. She teaches at the University of Western Sydney and is an Adjunct Professor at the University of New England.
More information
Please contact Uthpala Gunethilake
T: 02 9664 0902
F: 02 9664 5420
E: uthpala.g@unsw.edu.au
9780868409863, UNSW Press, September 2008, 288pp, PB , 234x153mm $39.95
The Centre
for Volunteering [ABN 28 002 416 024]
Level 2, 228 Pitt Street, Sydney NSW 2000
T: 02 9261 3600 | F: 02 9261 4033 | E: info@volunteering.com.au
www.volunteering.com.au