Over the coming month the Cobar Vinnies charity store will lose five of its dedicated volunteers and, while that will leave them with only a skeleton staff of six, the store hopes to be able to stay open.
Cobar Vinnies team manager Paddy Pratt said Vinnies provides a very important service to the community.
Paddy said losing five volunteers will however make it harder to be able to continue to provide the service.
Currently they only have 11 volunteers in total to run the store six days a week.
Paddy said as they haven’t been able to recruit any new volunteers, it looks like their only option is to reduce their opening hours.
This includes not being able to open on Saturday mornings, which is their busiest trading day.
Many of the Cobar Vinnies store volunteer staff are in their 60s or older.
Some have health conditions which limit their abilities and some, like Bev O’Brien who worked her last shift on Saturday, have decided they’ve done enough.
Bev said when she signed up to be a Vinnies volunteer 12 years ago it was a very simple process.
“You used to just sign the book and just start work,” Bev said.
She said signing up to be a volunteer now is a much more involved process which includes becoming a Vinnies member, having a police check, a Working With Children check, a first aid certificate and filling out a lot of paperwork.
“And now they want you to do it on a computer! I don’t use a computer, like a lot of other people my age. How are they supposed to sign up?” Bev questioned.
Bev thinks the current recruitment process could be turning a lot of people off volunteering.
Another volunteer, Margaret Thomas, who has been Vinnies’ laundress for many years, is also “retiring” this month.
“I heard that in Dubbo, if you’re 70 or over, you can’t work at Vinnies.
“That would count me out,” Margaret said.
Both Bev and Margaret said they had very much enjoyed working with Vinnies over the years and had, for the most part, found it very rewarding.
They said “going to work” at Vinnies had however gotten harder for them in the past few years as their workloads have increased as the number of volunteers dwindled.
“We really need some younger, energetic members,” Paddy said.
“Hopefully they’ll come forward to help and we will be able to open fulltime again.”
