Adelaide great-grandmother Dulcie Boag celebrated for volunteering for 44 years
This Adelaide great-grandmother has been dishing up kindness to the city’s most vulnerable for almost half a century. Find out why.
Lifestyle
Don't miss out on the headlines from Lifestyle. Followed categories will be added to My News.
For almost four and a half decades, Adelaide great-grandmother Dulcie Boag has been a regular kind face at homeless service, the Hutt St Centre.
She is the charity’s longest-serving volunteer and will take part in a weekend celebration which will include a special Pope’s blessing to mark 70 years since the service was established.
It was in 1954 sisters from the Daughters of Charity set about trying to support those “suffering in isolation” in Adelaide’s inner south-east – many were World War II veterans – by providing hot tea and sandwiches at the gates of what is now the Hutt St Centre.
CEO Chris Burns said while the not-for-profit had been non-denominational since the 1990s, its mission remained unchanged.
“The reason the Daughters of Charity came here remains at the very core of what we to help the most vulnerable people in Adelaide … the values we have lived and breathed for 70 years,” he said.
Mrs Boag, who turns 90 in February, has volunteered at the Hutt St Centre for 44 years and recalls working alongside the sisters.
“I had an interview with one of the sisters and have been here ever since,” she said.
Today she helps serve lunches each week but initially worked in the charity’s Halifax opportunity shop, which later moved to Hutt St, but no longer exists.
“At that time, I really didn’t want to work in the kitchen, I had six children and felt I’d spent a lot of my motherhood in the kitchen,” she said.
She refers to the “generosity of people with their donations” and the “respect and courtesy that has been given to me” as highlights of her decades-long volunteering experience.
”You create quite a bond with a lot of people, it is always great to see them and they are just as pleased to see you – some will give you a hug,” she said.
“Often in the kitchen, you’ll have people come up to the cook and say, ‘good on you Pete, that was tremendous’ … they just appreciate it.
“(Homelessness) can happen to anybody – it’s said you are everyone is only six steps away from it, which is scary.”
Mrs Boag, who was awarded South Australia’s highest distinction for an individual volunteer – The Joy Noble Medal – at this year’s South Australian Volunteer Awards said she’d learned “you just don’t judge anybody”.
“Some people are just very unlucky,” she said.
“Some children are very unlucky not to have loving parents as I did.
“We don’t know what a person has gone through, what they are going through … (to me, everyone) is on the same level.
“I have seen very brutal things happen out on the street … many years ago you’d mainly see ‘happy drunks’ but not any more; it is anger and so many people are using drugs which changes a person.”
Mrs Boag said she planned to keep volunteering as long as she could and believed helping others could “bring out the best” in volunteers as well.
Ahead of this weekend’s commemorative mass at St Francis Cathedral, Mr Burns paid tribute to the efforts of the founding sisters as well as volunteers.
“Without reliable, long-term volunteers like Dulcie we couldn’t plan for, or be sure of being able to support the clients who desperately need this service … they are our lifeblood.” he said.
The Hutt St Centre is one of a number of organisations supported by The Advertiser Foundation Blanket Appeal 2024. All donations over $2 tax deductible and can be made here.
The best multipurpose beauty products to shop now
Get glowing while shrinking your skincare routine
6 reasons to get Colorado on your bucket list
Often called “America’s Switzerland,” Colorado boasts 58 peaks over 14,000 feet (4,000m), more than any other state. But it's not just magnificent Rocky Mountains; there is much more to see and do.