Message from the Chair
Welcome to IVP’s 2024 Annual Report. In it you will hear of the mechanics of IVP’s functioning
from the teams responsible for building on the achievements from IVP’s 37 years of existence.
Rita Warleigh has been at the centre of those achievements and continues to inspire,
encourage, and exhort the current cohort of volunteers that make up those teams. Rita, with
Chris Dunstan and Vern Cork founded IVP in 1988 with the intention of sparking the message of
peace through international voluntary service.
Vern had a long association with Indonesia as a scholar, and developed deep personal ties
there. With deteriorating health, he began working with Rita on a library project that blossomed
into an SCI workcamp co-organised between IVP Australia and IVP Indonesia. Sadly, he died
shortly before volunteers arrived on the island.
The Vern Cork Library will give local high school students access to a rich collection of books. It
has also initiated a special connection between the two IVPs, and we hope introduce more
young Australians and young Indonesians to wider horizons through IVS.
2024 has seen the Goulburn Farmers Market consolidated through a dedicated committee on
the back of concerted efforts of the small IVP team that nursed the GFM to life. It continues to
demand Rita’s experience, time and skill as Market Manager but now has its own momentum,
while remaining constituted within IVP. Among other impacts, it gives us for the time being, a
financial foundation.
IVP continues to provide an organisational base for the Raising Peace festivals, cementing our
place in the Australian and international peace movement.
IElsewhere in the report, you will read from the teams responsible for placements,
membership, communications, IT, projects, finance and human resources. The latter has
become a vital function as we improve our procedures for recruiting people to fill roles on the
committee, to brief them, keep in touch, find roles that accord with their situation,
acknowledge their talents and record their contributions.
Many of the new people taking on roles on the committee and working groups have not had
workcamp experience. However, professional skills among recent recruits bode well for their
contribution and for IVP as a whole.
We had taken for granted working relations when we operated out of a physical site. We are
adjusting to building the same working conditions on-line, with rare opportunities to meet in
person. The patience of the newer members of the committee in this process is acknowledged.
Our outlook and purpose have not changed.
As usual it is the volunteers – past and future – to which this report pays tribute: those who
have joined us in roles on the committee and teams during the year; people from other
countries on a first Australian visit who we pick up from the train station ready to devote 2
weeks to physical work on a community project, and are still smiling when we drop them off
afterwards; and those young and older Australians inspired to see the world after searching
through our online projects database.
