Thanks for the interesting discussion.... I personally think each volunteer organisation (brigade, unit, etc) needs to consider how to attract the volunteer who does not have much money, but would welcome the training & companionship of being an emergency service volunteer.
The discussion was started during a 'recruiting volunteer day-time responders' workshop conducted by the VMB approximately 12 to 18 months ago. I believe one Unit is now facilitating car-pooling to weekly training meetings, by having a list on their notice board of people offering to share petrol costs, their telephone number & which suburb they live in.
As stated before, I do not believe financial reimbursement of all costs will ever work. This is against the volunteer ethos & would be too open to abuse
I wanted to see where this discussion lead before mentioning my reason for creating the thread.
What prompted me to start this thread is that the new SES 2008/09 SHQ training program has been issued.
On page 7 it states under 'Travel' heading "Attendees are required to arrange Unit, State Fleet, public or private transport to training venues. Generally, mileage reimbursement is not available to attendees. Mileage allowances will only be paid under special circumstances to attendees who have negotiated this prior to the activity with the Training Activity Manager.
The activity confirmation will normally list those attending the course or workshop, and attendees are encouraged to make contact with each other to organise group travel"
On the surface, this makes sense to me to reduce costs and ensure that the travel money is allocated to assist the correct volunteers.
SES SHQ courses are generally intended for volunteers who will take the skills back to the Units to train others. But the courses are also for volunteers who are interested in the skill that will not be taught within their Unit (though priority is given to volunteers from Units where the skill is a core competency, which is exactly right).
Personally, an 'Air Observer' course is not a core competency for the Unit I am with and thus I will need to do more work to see where I stand for travel to do the course. But the 'Operate Communications Equipment, Implementation Workshop' is a core competency, so this will be easier to nominate for.
It is a change that has happened because of the SES budget restrictions and I am not sure if it is good or bad for majority of the SES volunteers.
This will be discussed at higher levels so we will see what happens.
