As part of Volunteer Week, we’ve been asking the community to nominate volunteers who make a real difference to the people and places around them.
One nomination that stood out was for Lynne Cowley from the Bawley Point Kioloa Termeil Community Association.
Described simply as “the glue”, Lynne is the kind of person every community group hopes to have.
She’s the go-to person for just about anything that needs doing – sharing community updates online, delivering things to people’s homes, collecting feedback, supporting the President, taking minutes, organising morning teas, keeping records and helping make sure things don’t fall through the cracks.
But beyond the long list of jobs and tasks, the nomination spoke most about the way Lynne brings people together.
“She puts people together. She follows up issues that need to be processed. She liaises with Council, the Community Association and community members.”
The nomination also described Lynne as someone who never seeks recognition for what she does.
“She doesn’t judge people, she just acts on what is required.”
One story shared captured this perfectly.
During community consultation for the organisation’s Strategic Plan, hundreds and hundreds of sticky note responses were collected from local community members answering key questions about the future of the area.
Without being asked, Lynne sat down and manually entered every single response into an Excel spreadsheet.
Thousands of individual comments.
Hours of work.
One person making sure community voices were captured properly and not lost in the process.
The result became a rich and valuable source of feedback that helped strengthen the community’s understanding of what mattered most to local people.
Everyone, the nomination said, knows and loves Lynne in the community because of the way she helps keep people connected.
She was described in three words:
“An unheralded champion.”
And honestly, that feels pretty spot on.
Thank you Lynne, and thank you to the people in our communities who keep things connected, organised and moving forward through sheer generosity, care and goodwill.