A Boon for the community

Helen Boon was really looking forward to travelling to Indonesia – she has never been, and it would have been the perfect chance to visit her sponsor children, who she has sponsored for about five years.
But when her husband John said the Rotary Club of Pakenham planned to make a donation to the St Vincent de Paul Society at their annual changeover dinner, she decided she had better stay to accept their kind donation.
It was too late to change the holiday, and her parents, Harry and Jo Van Den Broek of Garfield, flew out without her the night before.
“John said, you know you are going to have to get up and speak – and I said I would say thankyou, but he said you might need more than that, to give them a snapshot of what St Vinnie’s does,” Helen said.
“I woke up at 3am one morning thinking about it, and I spent all night writing things and scrubbing them out.
“When we got there (then President) Tim Ahern asked me to come up the front and presented the cheque. I made the speech and he asked me to stay up there for a minute. I looked up and saw all my children standing at the back and promptly started crying.”
Helen said she was ‘blown away’ by the presentation, a surprise which John had known about all along.
“You never do these things to be acknowledged. There are so many more people out there, doing more than me,” she said.
Helen is one of about 30 hard-working volunteers at the Pakenham ‘conference’ (chapter) of St Vincent de Paul.
Every Tuesday, she visits St Patrick’s Church, in Pakenham, and prepares to visit up to eight local families in need of assistance and more importantly, a sympathetic ear.
“We give people a hand-up, not a hand-out,” she said.
“We see a lot of single mums, or people who have put everything they can in to their house, and then have no money for food. We see a lot of people living from paycheck to paycheck and then if something unexpected comes up, they are in trouble.
“It’s very, very rewarding, and just good for the soul. We should all be out there helping each other.”
The charity needs new volunteers to join its ranks.
“There are a lot of people needing help and we’ve noticed that over the past 12 months it has doubled, if not tripled,” she said.
On top of Pakenham’s rapidly expanding community, local St Vinnie’s volunteers were also called in to assist families after the Black Saturday bushfires.
“The Rotary club, CWA and many other groups have done a huge amount of work at Labertouche, and we were helping as well, going around to the affected families to see how they were going, if they wanted any food, and directing them to the right government departments,” she said.
“They needed everything. We found straight away that all had burnt the soles of their blundstones so we gave them new boots and socks – and hoses, because a lot had melted in the fire.
“We got to give these things to people and it was huge privilege to see the difference it made.”
And while the immediate need for food and other items has subsided, people still need emotional support.
“We’ve just started going again – we went to one young family and (the woman) burst into tears, saying all they needed was someone to talk to.”
John, Helen’s husband of 33 years and another Paul Harris Fellow, runs Boon Roses in Officer with his brothers.
A past Rotary president, John is also a Paul Harris Fellow.
Altruism runs in the family, with Helen’s parents – long-term members of the Rotary Club of Bunyip-Garfield – playing a key role in an Indonesian foster care network. “My parents go to Indonesia every second year to take summer clothes and things. The children in the orphanages aren’t necessarily orphans, but may have been put there by their very poor family,” she said.
“My dad was in the Dutch army and fought in Indonesia in the 1940s, and I think he was frustrated (at the time) that they couldn’t do more to help.
“They have always been very community-minded.”
Helen sponsors two children through the network and helps out at the annual fund-raiser, which involved a pig on a spit in Drouin South.
“It’s a really good Sunday afternoon,” she said.
In her downtime Helen likes to scrapbook, and has created extensive chronicles of the lives of her children – Nicole, Michael, Andrea and Danielle – which were presented to each child on their 21st birthday.
She has also put in countless volunteer hours to local community groups, serving on her children’s kindergarten committee, helping out at the school canteen, and is a past president of ROC Netball Club and the Officer Scout Group.
The super mum also likes to read and practices yoga.
“I love doing St Vinne’s, but you also have to look after yourself,” she said.
Anyone who is interested in volunteering with the St Vincent de Paul Pakenham Conference should call St Patrick’s Church on 5941 7315.