John Feint has been a volunteer with the St Vincent de Paul Society in Canberra and Goulburn for 16 years, and in that time started a program offering some fun to at-risk teenagers.
His volunteering in the capital began through his children, joining a parents and carers association, helping out with sporting teams, and volunteering with their Scouts groups.
But more recently, John developed the VINES Youth Program, which brings Vinnies and Scouts together to allow 13 to 15-year-olds whose life circumstances mean they are unable to take part in activities to get involved.
The program hosts a weekend activity every two months and a camp twice a year.
“I see a lot of young people that we meet through Vinnies who don’t have much in their lives, not much of a challenge,” John said.
“So we’re able to, through Scouts, challenge those kids with adventurous activities to engage them, and see other kids as role models and leaders in their lives.
“To give them some fun, really.”
Of all his volunteering, John said his work with Vinnies has been “the most rewarding, and the most challenging.”
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He said an example of this was when he recently helped a young mother who was escaping domestic violence, providing her with basic items like food.
“We also provided her with a new bed, and she said she felt like a queen because she had a bed to sleep on, not a sofa,” he said.
“That was very touching to me, just to see the look on her face when we brought that in.
“It was tremendous, and I get a lot out of that, the fact that we can just interact with people at that level.”
John Feint has won the 2023 ABC Canberra Community Spirit All Star Award.
‘No person is too far to reach’
From feeding the homeless to assisting the sick in hospital, Mijica Lus has also volunteered with numerous charities and not-for-profits in the Canberra area.
She was born in the capital, but Mijica and her family moved back to Papua New Guinea when she was five.
Two days before her 18th birthday she moved back to Canberra and said she immediately “felt a lot of connection to the place as well as the people who are part of this community”.
A few of the many places Mijica has volunteered include the Early Morning Centre, Multicultural NSW and Multicultural ACT Services, Helping ACT, the Canberra Hospital Foundation, Red Frogs Canberra, and the Pacific Women’s Alliance.
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She said her work in the Canberra community had strengthened her love for the city, and for people more generally too.
“Everything that I’ve been doing in community in some ways helps me to feel more connected to the place I was born and now I live in,” Mijica said.
“A lot of the community service I’ve been doing really encourages me to keep loving people, no matter what they’ve done or where they’re at in life.
“I think no person is too far to reach.”
Mijica Lus has won the 2023 ABC Canberra Community Spirit Youth Champion Award.
‘We share stories about the old country’
Anna Losanno started a community group to support older Italian Australian women struggling with loneliness, and it’s still running 24 years later.
Having grown up in Narrabundah with her Italian migrant parents, Anna had seen the community they formed with other Italian migrants in the area.
“They used to grow their own vegetables, and they used to share with each other, ‘I’ll bring you this if you bring me that’ and so on,” she said.
She said the idea for the group began as an assignment for a welfare course she took in 1999 in which she had to create a community group.
“I saw in the community that elderly people were left at home as the children went out to work,” she said.
“They felt very isolated and depressed, so I decided that it was a very good initiative, and it was one of the first in Canberra.”
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The group was originally called Gruppo Voluntario Assistenza Italo Australiano, but now it is called the Italian Australian Assistance Group.
Anna said in the group’s 24 years it had changed as its members got older themselves, but it remains a place for reducing community loneliness.
“[Now] we share stories about the old country and share recipes. It’s very important because not only do they speak the language, but you have the culture,” she said.
“You never lose that culture, and it is important that they get together, that they share what they know, and how they deal with things.”
Anna Losanno has won the 2023 ABC Canberra Community Spirit Multicultural Champion Award.
‘You can always give where you can’t take’
Wiradjuri woman Christine Sloane moved to Canberra 40 years ago and has been working to improve the lives of First Nations people locally ever since.
Christine said her mother raised her to give, and her work in the community has been centred around doing just that.
“My mum always taught us to always give. She said ‘you can always give where you can’t take’,” she said.
With that lesson in mind, Christine’s giving has included running a hostel for Aboriginal men who had recently moved to Canberra, leading the Canberra Aboriginal Church, and providing counselling, advice, homelessness support, and food hampers to those in need.
She said when she first joined the Canberra Aboriginal Church there were not many members, and though it is not much bigger now, the work they’ve done is.
“It was only a very few, and it’s still only small, but we’ve done some mighty work in the community,” she said.
“If you’ve got the heart in the right place and the love of helping people, it’s always been there.
“It’s not something new to me, I was brought up like that – to share and to always help others because down the line they could help you or your children. That motto always stayed with me.”
Christine Sloane has won the 2023 ABC Canberra Community Spirit Senior Champion Award.
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