Avenell Heights East Neighbourhood Watch celebrates its 30th anniversary of serving the community on 19 October.
Bundaberg Regional Council divisional representative, Cr John Learmonth, attends regularly and congratulated the group on their milestone.
“They provide an excellent service to the local community and I commend them on this outstanding achievement,” he said.
“Neighbourhood Watch gives people peace of mind.
“The volunteers are active and visible in promoting safety and deterring crime.”
The community group joins a select few in the organisation that have reached the three-decade milestone.
Neighbourhood Watch deputy area coordinator Lester Rogers said there have been many changes since the community-run organisation began.
“Keeping communities safe is still very much the basis of our group,” he said.
“These days there’s a lot of social media involved with Neighbourhood Watch so we have a Facebook page for our area, and some only operate using it.
“We still like face to face and have meetings to discuss things crime what we can do to help in the community.
“With modern technology you can get information out there a lot faster and you can source information more quickly.”
Lester said the organisation had spent the past 30 years keeping residents updated on crime, lighting, security measures and more.
In the past few years, they had extended the boundary out even further to include new developments.
Having been part of the Avenell Heights East Neighbourhood Watch for 24 years, Lester said the organisation has been proactive in helping.
“One of the things that we’ve done here in our area is that we’ve been responsible for putting street numbers on every gutter for every home in our area and that’s about 800 homes,” he said.
“It helps with emergency services, as they can find the number of the home quite easily.
“We’ve been engraving bicycles at a couple of local schools and we also deliver a newsletter to resident regarding news, crime statistics, facts and tips.”
Lester said the Avenell Heights East Neighbourhood Watch 30th anniversary, which will be held on 13 October, was a time to look back on the success of the organisation.
“The second meeting I came to I become a zone and a block coordinator and I’m still doing them,” he said.
“It is more or less keeping people up to date with what’s going on, but it’s also about neighbours who care about their neighbourhood and want to see the neighbourhood stay crime free as much as possible.
“I think that’s really the basis of it, we want to live in a neighbourhood that is safe and a good place for families to live and Neighbourhood Watch helps to achieve that.”
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