Bristol Paints Volunteer of the Month: Charmain Steventon

Nominations for the Bristol Paint Volunteer of the Year award are still open. To nominate a volunteer to be featured as our Volunteer of the Month from your affiliate click here.

It’s 7.30am on Sunday morning. A time when you’ll find most of us still well and truly tucked under the covers. Not Charmain Steventon and the army of volunteers at Canterbury Touch though. She’s up at the fields busily preparing for the Sunday junior competition that’s about to start. A competition and a club that’s been built on an overwhelming desire to give back to the local community.

Like so many of our volunteers Charmain Steventon’s official title at Canterbury Touch - Social Media Coordinator doesn’t do her role or contribution justice.

As our Bristol Paint Volunteer of Month, we speak to Charmain and discover the remarkable bond between teammates that has led to the resurrection of a junior competition and club that’s under pinned on friendships, authenticity and tangible giving back to the community or as the inner sanctum at Canterbury refer to it, Doggies Heart.

Congratulations Charmain, can you tell us about your Touch Football journey?

My journey at Canterbury begun 25-years ago when I came to the club from New Zealand. I joined the Women’s Open team and at that stage we weren’t that successful, but we stuck together as a group and eventually experienced success.

One of the best memories of that time wasn’t the on-field success rather the connection and fun I had with my teammates who remain my closest and best friends to this day.

After our open’s playing days most of us went away and had babies but once our kids were old enough, we couldn’t wait to come back and become involved in the club again.

At that time the clubs junior competition had fallen away and we wanted somewhere for our kids to play so we re-established the junior competition. Over the last five years the competition has grown from 30 to 500 kids which I’m incredibly proud of and passionate about growing further.

Now my whole family plays together at the club which as a parent is amazing and quite unique to Touch Football.

Canterbury is a small club in size (for metro Sydney) but seems to punch above it’s weight at representative and community level. Can you share any insights to this success?

We don’t have any bricks and mortar at Canterbury, we have people, so our goal is to create an environment that turns you into the best version of you, whatever that is.

It’s this philosophy that engages people to volunteer to give back, the impact is real.

When we created the junior competition for example we didn’t and still don’t focus on winning. Our focus is on having fun, learning new skills (physical and social) and ultimately enjoying yourself. From a club perspective the more kids we can have playing the greater social outcomes and life skills we can provide kids within our community, giving them the opportunity to be the best they can be.

It’s an approach that’s working. For example every Sunday morning our premier league players (most of whom are in their twenties and don’t have kids) are voluntarily running clinics, coaching or refereeing at the competition. We’re not the biggest, we’re not the strongest but we’re arguably the most engaged. It’s our Doggies Heart.

You’ve been very effective in using social media to grow the competition, can you elaborate on your strategy here?

Establishing a junior competition, we knew we had to reach parents and kids and traditional media wasn’t going to achieve this effectively or affordably, so our original strategy was to simply tell our story and reach our target audience via social media.

COVID prompted us to change our strategy however. Canterbury/Bankstown was particularly hard hit early in the pandemic with severe restrictions in place. Without physical games we wanted to continue to engage our members and wider community, so we changed our approach.

We brought in an Australian Cross-Fit champion to provide weekly “sweat sessions” for people to complete when they were stuck at home and gamified this by implementing various challenges for people to complete and post online.

We also ran an Olympics campaign and held a club trivia night via Zoom that pitted family against family which saw over 150 attendees and was a resounding success.

At the time I didn’t realise the impact these initiatives had on members of our community, but I still get people come up to me and thank me for keeping them entertained throughout a difficult period.

The whole experience changed our focus from using social media as an information tool to using social media as an entertainment platform to generate awareness of our competition and club.

If you had to convince someone to play Touch Footy what would be your 30 second elevator (sales) pitch?

C’mon, anyone can play, you’ll meet people, have fun and keep fit.. join Canterbury today!

What do you believe has been the biggest improvement or advancement in the sport from your perspective?

On the field the skill, fitness and speed of athletes today is incredible from when I started playing.

Off the field the partnership between TFA and the NRL has made Touch Football more accessible and showcases the game to a broad audience which is great.

What are your favourite Touch Football memories?

Winning our first NSW State Cup and Vawdon Cup finals with a group of girls that are now my closest and dear friends.

More recently seeing hundreds of kids from the community playing and smiling each Sunday morning.

Finally, if you were to win the Bristol Paint Volunteer of the Year award and $15,000 worth of prizes towards a home or club renovation – what projects come to mind?

We’ve outgrown our current home and are looking to double our junior participation again, so I’d definitely allocate this prize to a new clubhouse or refurbishment project.