Koala cuteness, conservation and news from the front line.
Volunteer Week Celebrations 2023
We celebrated Volunteer Week 2023 with these amazing humans! Did you know that we now have 240+ volunteers? Some, you will have heard about, spotted in photos and many, many more, who work quietly behind the scenes.
To celebrate our volunteers, we had some surprise nominations and presentations throughout the week for a number of well-deserving individuals. We also held a Koala Theme Trivia Night on Thursday (read through to the very end!) and The Art of Presentation with Jen.
Here are a collection of the Friends of the Koala Folk for Volunteer Week 2023!
The man behind the camera – Brad, what would we do without him?!Craig is one of our leafers – here he can be seen emptying the trailer of old leaf.Anne-Maree, who on a voluntary basis cleans our Burribi Centre 3 mornings a week. She won our first Volunteer Week Lucky Door Prize on Monday.Volunteer Kandy was awarded her Induction Accreditation Certificate as she’s completed her traineeship in FOK Koala Care. Kandy is now furthering her skills and enrolled in Oral Treatment for Koalas and Rescue Training.This is Mel who has completed her traineeship and has started training to be a 2IC in Koala Care.Volunteer Melissa has been with us for over a year now – she LOVES Charlotte – who doesn’t?!Meet Michael, who started with us in 2021. Michael loves doing the young koala runs.This is Sally, she is an experienced koala carer. Here, Sally is showing a new volunteer how to disinfect the logs.Here are Sarah and Laurie – International Volunteers from France.This is Susan our Thursday Supervisor. Susan has come along in leaps and bounds in six months. From a trainee to Thursday Supervisor of the koala care team! She is also a member of the Management Committee! This is Eyleen with another Trainee Certificate. Graeme fixing the lights on the Leafing Van.Nancy doing koala treatments.This is Jeff, he cleans FOK’s vehicles every Tuesday. He was recently given this award for his work with them. More about Jeff below!Meet the Volunteer Burribi Landcare team who work here once a month to clean around the area.The Thursday team members who have just completed their traineeship.The Thursday team with certificates.Volunteer Quiz Night: Our vollies putting their heads together for some koala general knowledge
More about Jeff!
As mentioned above, Jeff cleans our vehicles every Tuesday, he does this with another volunteer and very good friend Miriam Ella. Miriam has supported Jeff for over ten years – she is an amazing person, with a huge heart. Please read her post below, which we have linked to the original post. These two make an incredible team and we are honored to have them work here with us.
Our Koala Trivia Night was a big hit with twenty of our volunteers taking part. Everyone was pretty clued up in the koala category (gladly) but we shook things up a bit with some non-koala questions and well, they were a bit less informed (hopeless) – which is fair enough! We had a lot of fun and laughter, especially in the question and answer session with lots of friendly rivalry and pretend squabbling. We are so happy our volunteers had some well deserved fun!