The maximum amount received by any of the 24 local organisations was $5000, with each group planning to use the grants for different reasons. 

One of the organisations, Eureka Mums, plans to use its $5000 grant to provide first-aid training to volunteers who help regularly at their warehouse.

The organisation’s newly appointed operations manager Trinsa Lewis was pleased with the news yesterday, saying it would mean a lot to them.    

“We have a fundraising manager who keeps an eye out for these sort of things and applies for them,” she said.  

“This funding will be used for us to train our members in first-aid so we always have someone in the warehouse that has level two first-aid training, so we all feel very safe in here.

“It means that we can not just help the wider community but we can also help our volunteers because we are giving them extra skills and experience, particularly mums or young people who are going to go back into work at some stage these skills can help them.” 

The grants are provided to a wide variety of groups from sporting organisations, CFA branches and scout groups across the country.

Ballarat MP Catherine King said the grants recognised the valuable role volunteers played in the community and how far a small amount of money could go. 

“These are small volunteers grants and they are for organisations to support and help volunteers in the their organisations themselves,” she said. 

“I just went out to the Creswick Men’s Shed, where they have an old cobbled together heater and that is for heating the facility. 

“My experience with these kinds of grants it is that it is a small amount of money, generally around $5000,  but really it makes a huge amount of difference for the organisation.” 

Liberal candidate for Ballarat Sarah Wade  echoed the sentiment saying it was great to see the government providing such grants to the community to help volunteers. 

“Volunteers are critical and essential to our community, I believe it is important we all acknowledge  the hard work volunteers do.”