TRUDY SHARES HER PROFESSIONAL SKILLS WITH MA EARLY LEARNING SERVICES

Trudy Jenkins was working as a General Manager for QANTAS, when the GFC forced Trudy into redundancy. Trudy took this opportunity to look at her options and realised that she was happy with her skills and liked the work she was doing, but decided that the corporate world was not where her passion lay.

As fate would have it, Trudy was at Audrey Paige and ran into the Mission Australia CIO Geoff Rickard. Trudy had considered moving into the not-for-profit industry and picked Geoff’s brain about what he liked and disliked about the transition.

Geoff Rickard saw that Trudy had priceless talents to share and utilise. According to Geoff, ‘she had the ambition of a 23 year old, with the wisdom of a 50 year old’. As luck would have it, Geoff was working on submissions for the Department of Education and Workplace Relations and knew that Trudy had the skills to help with these submissions. The outcome was that Trudy started volunteering in a skilled capacity in Geoff’s team at Mission’s National Office. She worked tirelessly to support Geoff in the submissions and helped the project be completed successfully and on time.

Trudy loved her time volunteering with Geoff’s team. She felt like an equal team member from day one and instantly loved the culture at MA. She also appreciated being continuously thanked for her help, and was very impressed with the efficiency and seamless integration she had into volunteering at MA.

Fortunately for MA and for Trudy, a position that would leverage her skill set came up upon the completion of the original project, and so Trudy was offered a 3 month paid employment contract to work with Karen Twitchett as Project Manager for MA Early Learning Services. This was truly a win-win situation for everyone involved.

Trudy has said that being given the chance to share her skills with MA made an incredible difference to her confidence and self worth through skilled volunteering. She saw much value in leveraging her competencies and previous experience to carry out her volunteering role.

In closing, Trudy ‘loves coming to work’! Thanks Trudy!

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