To our wonderful volunteers

Thanks again for stepping forward to volunteer at the Bendigo Winter Night Shelter (BWNS) for 2025.

A few more things we needed to let you know about.

1. Alongsider Training – Virtual Training 17 June, 16 July & 21 August

We let you know at our Training night that we have affiliated with Stable One. Stable One provide resources for a network of night shelters.

One of the resources they are providing free to our volunteers is a 3 part series of virtual training sessions. These sessions are called “Alongsider Training”. The sessions will help you learn how to get alongside the vulnerable, the disenfranchised, the difficult and the different from a Christian perspective and using community work principles.

The three sessions are held virtually 7.30pm – 9pm on Tuesday 17 June, Wednesday 16 July and Thursday 21 August. The sessions are free for you as a BWNS volunteer. But you need to book in advance at https://www.trybooking.com/events/landing/1404761

Please note that these three sessions:

(a) are optional for volunteers. Just an added resource we are providing.

(b) are each different and build on each other so ideally you would attend all three sessions.

(c ) may use some Christian terms and language. However volunteers of all faith backgrounds will be able to learn from the core messages.

2. BWNS Training Material

Please note that if you have forgotten the information at the training nights, or weren’t able to attend the training nights, there is lots of information in Elevanto

(a) look in Roles / Team for a detailed breakdown of the requirements for each shift

(b) look in Resources / Guides for the 2025 Volunteer Handbook, videos from the training nights and a Koolamurt site familiarisation video

3. Elvanto – Please, Please accept your shift in the system

Some volunteers are turning up for their shifts without having first agreed to accept the shift in the Elvanto system. This creates confusion for us as we do not know if you are turning up or not.

Please ensure you click on the ‘accept shift’ or ‘reject shift’ as soon as you can when a shift is offered to you.

Some mobile phones don’t seem to allow you to accept a shift by SMS text. You just need to then go into the Elvanto app on your phone or laptop to accept or reject the shift.

4. More guests

We have averaged 7 guests per night for our first week of operation. This is just under the average number of 8 guests per night we hosted in 2023 over the whole of winter (the last time we operated).

We are expecting in the coming weeks that we may get more guests – potentially in the mid teens.

5. More volunteers

We currently have 270 volunteers registered. This is tremendously good news and a wonderful community support – particularly if we decide to extend the Shelter into some of September.

But it may mean you will be rostered less across the winter then you were hoping.

Thanks again for volunteering.

Daryl Lynch – Volunteer Co-ordinator

Andrew Weightman – Project Co-ordinator

Chris Dalton - Chairperson

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