Our learning support and mentoring programs in 90 Australian communities directly help children in need achieve their goals through education.
View all programs Celebrating our Volunteers
We have over 5,000 roles filled by volunteers across the country in every state and territory, by individuals who are generously giving of their time.
In National Volunteers Week we celebrate our 5,200 volunteers, who in the past year alone, donated more than 116,000 hours of service, with an estimated equivalent value of $3.7 million.
“The biggest proportion of our volunteers support us in our programs. So those are the people who are volunteer tutors in some of our learning or homework clubs or are involved in our online mentoring programs,” says Lauren Stocker, our National Volunteering Manager.
“We also have hundreds of volunteers who support us in administration or project roles, so they are working alongside our paid team members in our offices or working remotely. We just couldn't do the scale of work that we do supporting families and students without that contribution of time across the whole country.”
Key to our volunteering effort are the women of VIEW Clubs. “VIEW is our affiliate organisation that stands for Voice Interests and Education of Women. It was established in the 1960s as a service to women in the community and to support the work of The Smith Family. Over 14,000 members in nearly three hundred communities are exclusively supporting our work,” she says.
Peak body Volunteering Australia has released a new national strategy for volunteering in the wake of declining volunteer numbers that has been exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic. The Smith Family has also surveyed our volunteer cohort to ensure their needs are heard and that volunteer opportunities remain rewarding.
“It is a bit of a changing landscape and something that we have to consider in how we develop opportunities and craft volunteering roles for the future so that they align with how volunteers want to spend their time.”
“Over the last several years and again, predating the pandemic, we have been prioritizing the volunteer experience because we want to be known as one of the charities of choice when it comes to volunteering. So that for people in the community, thinking about where they want to give it their time, that we are in their minds and that they know that when they come to us, they will have a great experience.”
We welcome you to explore current opportunities to volunteer with us in a range of roles to assist in our work to overcome educational inequality caused by poverty.
