Have you ever considered...volunteering?

Not only is volunteering a great thing for the community, but it is also a great thing for you too. Volunteering can help you:

• Build your confidence
  
• Gain new skills
• Make new friends
• Feel good about helping others
• Have fun

On top of all of that, volunteering looks great on your resume when it comes time to find a job!

(Not to mention getting your community service hours up).

So, what sort of opportunities are out there? 

There is also an almost endless supply of things that you can volunteer for - so pick something that interests you. Some of the sorts of things you could consider include:

• Joining a lifesaving club
• Joining an emergency services group (e.g. CFA or SES).
• Get involved with an aid organisation (or other human rights or social justice group)
• Something local could be the soup kitchen
• Something more global could be helping collect items and organise items to be shipped to overseas organisations.
• Help out with a local club - perhaps a local performing arts group
• Visiting a sick or elderly person
• Tutoring a refugee in English, or helping out with the school holiday refugee programs
• Helping out with a conservation project or group (something like Landcare)

For more information try reading these helpful guidelines put together by Youth Central:
http://www.youthcentral.vic.gov.au/jobs-careers/volunteering-work-experience/volunteering

eBooks for holiday reading

Did you know that the ILC has eBooks that you can download and read? This means that even though borrowing has finished for the year, you can still get your reading fix from us!

All you have to do to find eBooks is go to the ILC homepage and type ebook into the search. If you are looking for a particular title or genre, simply type that into the search followed by ebook. For example: Head of the river ebook or Adventure ebook.

If you hover your mouse over a title you are interested in, you will be able to open the book by clicking on the link marked related web addresses.

Try some of these great reads:

      

Don't forget that eBooks can be read on any device that can read ePub files. That means you don't need your laptop, you can curl up with your phone or tablet with your new favourite book.

Have you picked your holiday reading yet?

Holidays are great, you get to sleep in, catch up with friends, and generally muck around. But there are always a hours here and there where you don't feel like running around, or playing games. Those bits of time where you can just curl up in the quiet and read something that takes you away for a bit.

Maybe it is something that will make you laugh, like Life in Outerspace by Melissa Keil

Something that will make you cry, like Looking for Alaska by John Green

Or just something that will get your heart beating fast because you just want to know what is going to happen next, like Bomb by Sarah Mussi

Maybe it will be something popular that you haven't read yet, like Divergent by Veronica Roth

Or maybe something more obsure, like Hold Me Closer Tiny Cooper by David Leviathan

Or an old favourite, like Matilda, by Roald Dahl

Whatever you feel like, I am sure there is something in the ILC that will catch your eye.