St Mary’s House of Welcome is a place for all people with all sorts of skills and experience. We are happy to explore ways of utilising your talents. Please include all your skills on your application form.

Dining Room: Includes serving meals, washing up, setting tables and interacting with service users to ensure the service runs smoothly and is enjoyable for diners. Monday to Friday, in two shifts, Breakfast (8.00am -10.00am) and Lunch (11.30am -1.30pm).

Food Prep: Assisting with food preparation and basic kitchen-hand work including washing up, cleaning, plating food and supporting the Chef to ensure the service runs smoothly. Monday to Friday between Breakfast and Lunch and usually rolls over into assisting in the dining room at Lunch (10.00am -1.30pm).

Driving: Collection of food and various donations at the request of our chef and support workers; and drive groups to events.

Recreation: Supporting staff during trips with groups, facilitating groups, driving, making sandwiches or cooking BBQ’s.

Events: Volunteer to work at one of our fundraising events such as the Trivia Night, Degustation for Dignity. Roles include set up, welcoming guests, food serving, bar tending, and pack down.

Other areas: such as the Board of Directors, hairdressing, fundraising, and fishing trips.

Volunteers are a vital part of the team at St Mary’s House of Welcome – your commitment and regular, reliable attendance enables us to deliver excellent services to marginalised, disadvantaged, socially isolated and homeless people in Melbourne. Our volunteer rosters work on a fortnightly basis. Most of our regular volunteers attend weekly or fortnightly. On occasion, volunteers may be contacted by us regarding their availability to act as “relief volunteers” (eg. If we need help when our regular volunteers are away).

Fundraising event volunteering often occurs in the evenings or on weekends, so this is a good fit for people who work full time during the week, those with busy schedules and those who prefer shorter term more flexible options.

Yes! All volunteers need to have a Police Check (CRIMCHECK) and a Working with Children’s Check. This is a government requirement for all staff and volunteers, and work at St Mary’s House of Welcome cannot start until both these checks are sighted.

For the Police Check please download and complete this form and bring it in with your ID to your interview and we process it here.

For the Working with Children Check you can start the application online and then take a passport photo and 100 points of ID to an Australia Post office. We are classed as number 64 on the form which is a religious organisation and everything else is self-explanatory. There is no fee charged for volunteers.

Please note that as a holder of a Working with Children’s Check you have a duty of care and a legal responsibility to report any incidence of child abuse that you encounter.

Community Volunteers: St Mary’s House of Welcome is very fortunate to have almost 200 regular volunteers who are actively involved in a variety of roles across the organisation. They have contributed around 8,000 hours per year in areas such as the Dining Room, art classes, social inclusion programs, collecting food donations and – of course – our wonderful receptionists who manage to create such a welcoming atmosphere for the people seeking our assistance or support.

Corporate Volunteers: Each year, we have a number of corporate groups volunteering with St Mary’s House of Welcome via their Corporate Responsibility Programs. Usually, these groups get involved in hosting Community BBQs or excursions for our service users.

School Volunteers: We currently have more than 20 schools which volunteer at St Mary’s House of Welcome throughout the year. We have also have numerous schools from regional Victoria visit us to learn more about what we do and help with things such as preparing and serving morning tea. St Mary's House of Welcome encourages interest shown by young adults in our work. Unfortunately, our Child Safe Policy does not allow us to welcome young adults under 18 years as volunteers, unless they form part of our school organised activities program.

Event volunteers: Volunteers are essential to the success of our help major events and fundraising throughout the year. Often these volunteers are those people who are unable to volunteer during business hours.