Volunteering at Lou’s Place
There is nothing quite like the feeling of comfort and goodwill when you walk into our lovely New Lou’s, to be greeted by the aroma of a delicious home cooked meal. Added to that, the friendly atmosphere generated by lively and jovial conversations coming from our specialist activities, you have a very special place indeed. The unique talents and various backgrounds of our volunteers bring together a common sense of purpose; women helping women.
COVID and our move to Redfern have given us a unique opportunity to reset and expand our volunteer services. We finally have room to run simultaneous activities on both levels of the house. We’ve added cooking classes twice a month, Reiki, an additional yoga/meditation session, and guitar lessons. We have a hairdresser starting in April and we’ve also held a couple of successful budgeting workshops. We are always open to new ideas!
The Pop-Up Boutique deserves a special mention, as it’s one activity which has not moved with us to the New Lou’s. When Lou’s first opened its doors, access to quality clothing was not easy for our women. Our famous Pop-Up was established by a set of dedicated volunteers. It went through many iterations from once a month to once a week to once every two weeks. It once had its own room (later turned into a case management room), and was supported in recent years by Kennards, who generously donated storage to us. Clothing donations were made both to Lou’s directly and to Kennard’s. Our incredible team sorted, cleaned and managed all donations, while helping to provide emergency clothing the staff needed on site for women in crisis. The team would magically turn our living room into a “shop” and back again in just 3 hours. We cannot thank our boutique ladies enough for their generosity, good spirit and love for Lou’s clients.
So how do our women access clothing now? There are a number of specialised services in the community that run specific programs providing clothing and styling to our women. Our women have access to this through tailored online ordering (often assisted by their case manager), mobile “dressing rooms” (tailored trucks that come directly to services like ours) and access to their “shops”.
Always busy at Lou’s Place, the space opened up by outsourcing the Boutique has already been filled by an expansion of our professional program work on site. Watch out boutique ladies - we still need you in house for other tasks!
If you are interested in volunteering with us at Lou’s Place, or know someone who might be, please do not hesitate to reach out via our website.