Illya Samarin

Community Projects and Braybrook Men's Shed

Tell us about your volunteer role

When I retired in 2017, I didn't have much to do, so I got some part time work doing some garden maintenance at a school. Then I saw the Men's Shed was opening in Braybrook (at the Braybrook Community Hub), before that it was somewhere else in a tin shed. Soon I got on the committee and now I’m the Treasurer. We do a lot of community projects. For example for Council we’ve done tool maintenance and building bee boxes at the Flood Recovery event; with schools we do a bit of playground repair and made seats; we built some of the cupboards at the Braybrook Hub, and the coffee cart, and made quite a few things over the years. And that's all done at cost just to keep ourselves viable. We’re self-funded so we have to do fundraising, so for example we’ve done thousands of stakes for all the plants in parks over the years. Most of our fundraising goes towards maintaining the shed, and replacing old equipment, and how much we raise varies each year.

What difference does volunteering make in your life?

I think it gives me purpose. When I first retired, I just did nothing for about a year and quickly realised this isn't good. So I joined the Men’s Shed and that can vary from one day to about four days a week, depending on needs. Being the Treasurer I do quite a lot of background work and paperwork, ordering and paying for things, accountability to the government because we are a charity. We have a variety of age groups. It's mostly retirees who run it, because we've got the time I suppose. But we do have some younger people who come in and do things, some of them are really talented. One person who comes in makes electric guitars, and they are magnificent! Others who come in and just want to deliver a project, or just want to have a chat.

How do you believe your volunteer work has made a positive impact on the Maribyrnong community?

We try to make sure that what we do caters for community. We do lots of things with and for the community. And we don’t go for profit, we just try to maintain our financial status and keep it cost effective for people. And because the Men’s Shed is based on men’s health, we do lots of activities about men’s health, like talks on prostate cancer, depression and things like that. We’ve got quite a few members who suffer from those things and it works well for them to get that support.

In line with this year’s NVW theme of "Connecting Communities”, how does your volunteering help foster a sense of connection, both for you and others?

Basically you can come in, have a look and see how you feel, if you feel welcome, if you feel like you can contribute, come along and sit down and have a talk. You don’t have to make anything to be involved, we also talk to each other about our health and mental health and wellbeing.