'Volunteers to the SES are everything' - paying tribute to Eden emergency responders

The theme for this year's national volunteer week, celebrated from May 15 to 21, has been dubbed 'Change Makers'.

The week-long event recognises the vital support that millions of volunteers across the country provide to their communities.

SES Eden unit commander, Patricia Daly said they wouldn't be able to offer the help they do, without their devoted volunteers.

"Locally it's all volunteer run and our main task and responsibility is to help save lives and help communities prepare for emergency weather warnings," she said.

"From storms to floods and heaven forbid tsunamis, we are there to help. We even provide rescues services for road crashes, if anybody gets trapped in a vehicle, we've got a team on standby 24 hours a day, seven days a week."

Ms Daly has volunteered for SES for over 15 years, starting in Sydney before being transferred to Bega and then Eden, where she has been for the last decade.

In that time Ms Daly said her favourite thing about volunteering was being there for others when they needed it most.

"I personally like the idea that when somebody needs help I can go and be that person or part of a team that will help them, as a society I think its important that we look our for each other," she said.

Ms Daly said helping others through her work at SES, brought her a sense of purpose and was a great responsibility to bear but one well worth it, especially when it meant "saving and changing" people's lives.

"When someone is in a dreadful situation and we get a team there to help them and potentially save their lives, it important and it's also a really good feeling," she said.

Ms Daly said all volunteers joining the SES had the opportunity to learn diverse skill sets that were nationally recognised and would help people build leadership skills, hands on experience with power and hand tools, use of communication equipment and team building skills.

Ms Daly said from her own experience she'd learnt skills that she never imagined possible.

"I've worked in offices all my life, I'm a city girl and when I joined SES I learned all kinds of new skills, for example I never thought I'd pick up a chainsaw because I thought it was just for men but I was wrong," she said.

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"We've got a lot of women and men in our unit who are learning new skills that they might never have thought of learning."

The Eden SES unit currently has around 20 active members, however the unit is looking for more volunteers to join.

Ms Daly said there was no better time than now to join the SES, especially with the community's push to becoming more resilient.

"We talk a lot about becoming more resilient as communities to be prepared for any future disasters and this is a great way to do that," she said

"It's a great way to not only learn new skills but by learning how to act in certain situations, you learn how to control an incident rather than be the victim of it."

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The rescue services that SES members are trained for include: Road Crash Rescue, Vertical Rescue, General Land Search Rescue, Flood Rescue as well as response to storms, floods and tsunami.

Currently the Eden SES unit isn't able to offer vertical rescue services due to needing more volunteers and has to rely on Bega or Narooma units to help.

Ms Daly said she'd encourage anyone interested in rock climbing and cliff rescues to join the Eden unit and get trained up for it.

"We normally provide vertical rescue in the area for people or animals that are stuck on cliffs but we can't at the moment because we haven't actually got enough people trained up to do it," she said.

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"It's a shame because I'm sure there's lots of people locally would would be perfectly and physically capable to do it and would enjoy the chance to help rescue someone off a cliff".

Ms Daly said anyone interested would first receive the basic training and then other training opportunities based on what they're interested to branch into.

"What we generally find is when people join, they won't just specialise in one they'll try everything. It's good fun once you get in to the unit and the travel, personal protective equipment and clothing is all provided," she said.

Ms Daly said the current number of volunteers was a diverse group with long-time members and new recruits.

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"We've got some very new members who've been with us for a couple weeks to some who have been with us for 10 to 15 years and one who has been with us for 28 years now," she said.

Ms Daly said anyone interested to join could either get in touch with her via phone on 0458 737 160 or attend their weekly training night at 2 Wirriga Street, Eden at 6pm on Thursdays.