Did you know? The term ‘conference’, the name of our local, grassroots groups, is something that goes back to our French roots! It’s just another word for ‘meeting’, stemming from the Latin ‘to confer’ which means ‘to bring together’. 

Join a group of like-minded young people in your local area and get to work assisting those in your community. There are conferences everywhere doing good works week in and week out. Some are just for young people 16-35 years, and focus on doing advocacy, fundraising, or running a youth program. Others bring together those of all ages to do home visits.

Home visits give you the opportunity to meet and chat with people who’re in need of support. There are several reasons people call Vinnies for support. We spend the time to get to know each individual or family, encouraging them, and talking about the cause of whatever it is they’re facing.

We then provide support for urgent needs (such as a grocery card or covering a phone bill), but we also talk about how we can help in the long term too. We call it the ‘hand up’ approach.