Celebrating another successful year of volunteering
Every year around this time, we invite our volunteer tutors to come together to celebrate their year of volunteering. We recognise the time, resources and talent that our volunteers have invested.
This year we have hosted Tea Parties in various locations, which have been a great opportunity for our tutors to catch up and talk about their tutoring experiences.
Our first event this year was in Geelong at a local café and although no one knew it beforehand, some of our volunteers were about to reconnect after many years apart.
As the tutors entered into the cafe, they introduced themselves to each other and started chatting. Jodie, who is one of our tutors turned to another tutor to ask, ‘Are you Maria?’ When Maria replied yes Jodie said excitedly, ‘You were my teacher in primary school!’ Both Jodie and Maria were excited to reconnect but this Tea Party had one more surprise. Jodie looked around the room and thought she recognised someone else. She turned to the person sitting next to her and asked, ‘Mrs Ros, is that you?’ Ros was one of Jodie’s high school teachers!
After so many years Jodie, Maria and Ros had a lot to catch up on, and we were delighted that volunteer tutoring created an opportunity for them to see each other.
After the event Jodie sent us this beautiful message:
I just wanted to reach out and say thank you for the opportunity to meet some of the other tutors with AMEP. I really enjoyed the session.
I truly valued the chance to connect with fellow AMEP tutors in the Geelong area and was delighted to discover that two of my former teachers, Maria and Ros, were also volunteering. The experience was both inspiring and humbling, reminding me of the profound and lasting impact educators & tutors can have on their students—just as my teachers have had on me.