Bushfires and a whole lot more.
Mark Howells
Founding Managing Director My Ability Australia ( MY Holding/ Group)| New Business Development Expert| NDIS PROVIDER & PARTICIPANT ADVOCATE
May seem like a long time until the summer months arrive here in SA at the moment, but this is the time of year that the CFS volunteers are training and getting ready for summer 2018-2019. Over 20000 incidents are attended by volunteers from the CFS each year, thats over 54 incidents everyday. Volunteers donate over 1000 hours of their time to supporting South Australians whenever we need it, and they never let us down.
I was sat in a meeting yesterday with the MD of a very well known SA business that had the support of the CFS last summer, also in that meeting were two senior volunteers who had attended that fire for the full 6 days. Over 120 volunteers from 10 different brigades were onsite for the duration of that fire.Those volunteers had given up their time, SA businesses that employed those people had let them leave work to attend that fire to save millions of dollars worth of damage. It was truly an amazing discussion were the MD was thanking the volunteers and the volunteers were saying that Ok its what we are here to do. There was no grandstanding, no reaping the applause, no taking a bow, its so very humbling to be around our CFS volunteers.
During the first 3 months of being in my role with the CFS Foundation, a volunteer asked me to change our tagline which was, FOR OUR LOCAL HEROES, I asked him why he didn't like it and he said "We are not heroes we are just doing our job", it took about 2 months for this change to take place, in that time if I had a penny for every time I was asked to change the tagline, our fundraising would be so much easier now !
CFS volunteers are the engine room of the CFS, they are 13,500 people strong, and totally dedicated to their communities, and the CFS Foundation is dedicated to supporting those volunteers should they need us. However we need your help in supporting them. If over the coming months you decide that your business or school is holding a charity day, think of the CFS Foundation, and help us help, those who support you.
One last thing on 24th May 2019 we will be holding the CFS Foundation SHOUT OUT day, wear something yellow and make a donation to the CFS Foundation.
For more information please contact me at [email protected]
Thanks for reading.