Information for volunteers

Okay I'm Norm by The Geek and I've been volunteering for five years now.

Five years now.

Seven years this year.

For five days.

Oh it must be at least five years I think no maybe longer.

We've been the surface Paradise now six years we've done a lot of volunteering our 40 years that we've been married and yeah when we came up here we looked where we could help the community and I can't remember if you saw on TV that they needed volunteers for Schoolies. So we put our hand up and loved every minute of it.

My school is was quite eventful. The only thing I remember from a particular incident was bright orange tabards coming to help me out so I felt like I had to repay my dues.

I've been wanting to do it for years I just haven't been organized and being able to get back together because of life I suppose. But um I've got a 18 year old who's just finished school this year so this year was the perfect push just to to make it all happen and I'm so glad I did.

Being 90 now yes and if I'm still around when I'm 91 I'll be back again.

We wanted to come back every year because we wanted to continue seeing the schoolies seeing how much fun they have and and promoting to the local community that Schoolies is about fun.

The satisfaction and the reward you get at a like a personal level making sure they're having a good time is far better than anything else.

Yeah living in the moment they're enjoying themselves they're you know some are a little bit worse than others but you know we're here to help and support and being a part of that and in that mix is just awesome.

They um they love it here they love the volunteers as they appreciated volunteers and yeah they respect us.

I work in the kitchen which I love I do the sandwiches because the sandwiches with ham bacon cheese and I do sausage rolls pies Leaf pie.

Don't even think don't just sign up but you'll have so much fun.

Stop procrastinating just just do it because it's it's so rewarding it really is yeah.

Keep going and you're still young.

Being a Schoolie support volunteer is fun basically it's just great fun you have a wonderful week enjoying yourself seeing other young people being very happy in what they're doing they're having a great time of their lives and that you're there to support them and encourage them to stay safe and and have a good time themselves and I think the schoolies so enjoy the fact that there's adults around because they can identify that there's always someone there looking after them if they get into any form of strife.

The reason that the volunteers are so important to the gold coast school is safety response is that they're a layer of safety to help assist these school leavers. Obviously there's a lot of different agencies involved and a lot of different support services available and with our army of volunteers it's imperative that they're there to make sure that everybody's kept safe and also making sure the community is kept safe as well. The kind of jobs that the volunteers will be doing over the Schoolies Response is wristbanding the school leavers so you'll be helping putting our official year 12 school is wristband on our year 12 school leavers. You'll also be helping out with data input. I will supply you with an iPad and you'll be putting in different types of data that you'll get from the students. We'll also have you organising our queue lines making sure if the school leaders have any questions you'll be able to help answer them for them. And then we've got our street patrols which go up around the Schoolies Hub at Surfers Paradise there along the beach and you're their first point of contact if something may go wrong.

So the situations that you would encounter as a volunteer are varied. They range from just basically helping out the schoolies with sometimes random requests like um trying to help them find a thong or something like that to supporting someone who has maybe had a little bit too much to drink and just needs a little bit of help there or or just reassurance that everything is going to be okay.

What you need to be a Schoolies Support team volunteer is a great attitude. You're going to be working with a lot of different people from a lot of different areas. So a good attitude is what we're after you're going to need to be over the age of 19 and we're also going to need you to have a Blue Card.

If you don't have a Blue Card we can help you with that process in making sure you can have one ready for the response.

I continue to sign up and volunteer each year because every year is different so there's no guarantee that you'll do the same thing year after year. I love hanging out with the schoolies and it's really nice to uh get even a little bit of recognition from them at the end. They start off being quite quiet with you and just getting used to you and getting used to their environment because it's a big week for them and then by the end of the week they're um they come up to you they high five they say thank you for supporting us and that's really lovely as well.

During Schoolies you can expect to do lots of walking get the kids come to you give you high fives hugs or talk to you ask you for direction so it's good if you know a little bit about Surfers where the hotels are or they will come and ask you any questions.

I commenced becoming a Schoolies Support person my children went through Schoolies so as an as a parent you want to make sure that everything's cool for them and because it's good fun doing doing it you just keep on doing it you become familiar with what happens you enjoy it and it's it's great fun it's a great week you don't get a lot of sleep admittedly but no it's good fun.