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Category: Interviews »

Subject: Cultural Studies »

Concetta Benn on Co.As.It. - Italian Association of Assistance

Concetta Benn.

Concetta Benn reflects on her time with CoAsIt and her role in its strategic development.

Created:

unknown

Date Added:

06 April 2009

Source:

source not available

Format:

mov (Quicktime);

File size:

5.6 MB

Length:

02min08sec

Transcript

Benn:

00:06

There were not many social workers from an Italian background. And Mrs McCowrie (sp?) who started Co.As.It in Victoria found out that I was a social worker and I was Italian too. And she was trying to set up the organisation and she wasn’t very good at setting up organisations. So she asked me to help her and I did and I helped her to find a social worker who was prepared to start off the organisation and we did that and I then, got involved in Co.As.It and joined the board and was the deputy chair for quite a long period of time and I spent a lot of – did a lot of policy work for Co.As.It really – you know: how it should go ahead, how it should develop, what it should do. Mrs McCowrie was not knowledgeable about such matters at all.

01:13

And so that really I was the social worker behind the president so to speak. And I stayed there for quite a long time and – doing all sorts of things in Co.As.It, but I decided it needed change. And it needed change in its board, so I wrote to Mrs McCowrie and said that I thought that I would resign and I thought it was time she did too. That we were both getting too old, they needed fresh blood and they needed people who could develop a sort of managerial side of the organisation because she wasn’t able to do that. So that’s how I got involved and that’s why I left.

02:08

End transcript