How you can get involved:
There are many ways you can get involved with Crag Stewards Victoria. Everyone at CSV is a volunteer, but we have three areas that anyone can contribute to:
- Volunteer – help out with working bees and projects at your favourite crags
- Steward – commit to a monitoring and care role for your local crag
- Support Role – help the board run the organisation, support fundraisers or events
If you need to some help in working out how you could best contribute, please CONTACT US
Volunteer
Working bees are at the heart of our organisation; not only do they maintain access to climbs and care for surrounding habitats, they help to build local climbing communities and demonstrate to land managers that we can look after our climbing places.
There are all sorts of roles at our working bees and pretty much anyone can contribute in some way. Just register your interest to let us know how you would like to contribute, where you are prepared to go and if you have any particular skills that we could utilise. First aid certifications are particularly useful for us to know about as we often need one at each event.
We will brief you before the event on what to bring and run through safety and job instructions on the day.
The vast majority of our working bees are conducted in parks managed by Parks Victoria. This requires participants to register as volunteer with PV and sign on to events via their ParkConnect system. It also means that you will have to hold a current Working with Children Check.
To register on Park Connect: Register
To apply for or upload a Working With Children Check : WWCC
Once you are registered you can Join our Volunteer Group which is called Crag Volunteers: Search for Group
Once you register as a member of our group you can sign on to our Activities. This helps save a little paperwork on the day.
Note that an Activity will only appear once it has been formally approved by PV. This often happens in the few days leading up to the event. We will organise the event and ask for volunteers well in advance of this, so please let us know of your availability via email when the event is communicated via email or Social Media.
Steward Roles
Becoming a steward involves committing to take on a few responsibilities in a climbing area or other defined roles. This will usually require some climbing experience a little introductory training and a few formal commitments, but this can vary with the type of stewardship role.
- Crag Steward
- Monitors the condition and activity at a specific climbing area, suggests and helps to run maintenance and care activities, promotes good crag etiquette and builds relationships with local climbers and park staff
- Requires climbing experience and a good connection with the climbing area
- General Steward
- Monitors climbing activity and crag condition at any area they visit, promoting good climbing etiquette and highlighting any concerns to Crag or Regional Stewards
- Requires broad climbing experience and good interpersonal skills.
- Urban Steward
- Contributes to training or communication activities at gyms or on-line
- Requires good climbing knowledge and communication skills
These stewards are overseen and supported by more experienced stewards; either Regional Stewards who coordinate the stewardship activities in all of the climbing areas in their region, or the Steward Coordinator who coordinates our program and network across the state.
If you are interested in a steward position, please fill out our Google Docs form.
Support Role
We are happy to accept any offer of assistance with the running of our organisation, raising funds or coordinating activities. If you would like to contribute in other ways to the Volunteer or Steward roles please register your interest to let us know how you could help out.