When I received the email this year that our next Annual Report was coming up and I needed to send in an update for the Organisational Services team, I was shocked – had it already been a year since I wrote the last one? Then I realised that last year, we pushed our AGM out several months because we wanted to host the meeting in-person at our new office building. As you may know, we were still undergoing renovations when the AGM rolled around at the beginning of February, so we weren’t able to hold it in-person. But at least I feel a little bit better knowing that I haven’t lost another full year of my life. And the good news is – we can finally host our AGM in our new office this year & are so excited to welcome you to our new space.
For me, the most exciting part of the 2023 financial year was bringing Snowy Primmer on board as the new Organisational Services Support Officer. We received a ton of interest for this role, and it was hard to narrow down the impressive candidate list. However, after we did the interviews, the choice was clear: Snowy received an unequivocal “yes” from the panel and I contacted her straight away! Snowy started with us back in October 2022 and it’s hard to remember what HRVic life was like without her. Snowy has continued to impress everyone at HRVic since her first day & we are so lucky to have her on our team.
I couldn’t finish this report without updating you on our new office. We finally settled into the building in late February and if I thought moving was going to be the last thing on the list, I couldn’t have been more wrong! Is it exciting to have a converted warehouse space in Brunswick? Absolutely! Does it feel good to have a bigger office that suits a ton of HRVic’s needs? Feels great! Has moving into a space 5x bigger than our last office & discovering all the special quirks that it has to offer been fun? Well, I wouldn’t say “fun”. But it definitely feels like a huge accomplishment - getting into the new office, finally having things set up, starting to host workshops and events and most importantly, sharing it with our community & allies – with each day that goes by, it feels more & more like home.
People keep telling me that the work on the building “will never be finished” – and I can’t say I disagree. In fact, I might say this sums up a lot of the work that the Organisational Services team does. Our responsibilities revolve around supporting the HRVic Board, staff members, peers, volunteers and stakeholders, among others. From human resource questions to IT solutions, organisational & program budgets and office enquiries, maintaining relationships and developing new systems that help HRVic evolve – these are just some of the tasks that we take on every day. Sometimes I describe our team as the one that people bring their questions to when they don’t know who else to ask. And with HRVic continuing to grow year after year, there’s never a dull moment – but we love it! Well, most of the time ; )
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The sharing of our new building with the Vixen Collective; the only peer-run sex worker organisation in Victoria, has brought new energy to the community work that HRVic does, as alot of our work (and communities) cross paths.
SSDP and Family Drug Support have also joined us as ‘hot deskers’ and we’ve opened our doors and spaces to AIVL and other visiting community DUO when in Melbourne for meetings or conferences.
