If you’re looking for love, you need to find Melina Schamroth. Her Single Volunteers events have made matches all over Australia while doing good for charities.
If you’re looking for love, you need to find Melina Schamroth. Her Single Volunteers events have made matches all over Australia while doing good for charities. Now this expat Kiwi is bringing the love home.
The stadium fills with the noise of chatter as people of all ages and from all walks of life chop vegetables. At 20-minute intervals the men stop what they’re doing and switch tables, exchanging knives for peelers and pastry for potatoes, while the women stay in place. In one evening they’re hoping to make thousands of meals for Melbourne’s homeless. These 250 volunteers at Etihad Stadium are single and they’re also here to meet potential partners.
It’s one of over 50 Single Volunteers events that Melina Schamroth has run under the umbrella of her one-woman social enterprise, m.a.d.woman. They’ve attracted quite a following in Australia, and Schamroth, an expat Kiwi, is keen to bring them to New Zealand.
Frustrated by the lack of opportunities for meeting others who shared her values, Melina decided to create her own. The first Single Volunteers event took place in a soup kitchen with a small group of men and women. At the end of the night, Melina passed out a sheet where the volunteers could note down who they’d like to meet again. “It was incredible. They all were saying, ‘We forgot that was why we were here’.”
It’s such a brilliant idea: take a group of single men and women and teach them how to cook, help out bushfire victims, or create toys for abandoned animals. Gone is the awkwardness of having nothing to talk about or nothing in common. Gone is the feeling you’ve wasted your time if you didn’t meet a potential match.
“I think everyone lets their guard down because they’re coming to do an activity rather than just a networking event. When you’re chopping up carrots, you’re not really thinking, ‘How old are you? How long have you been single for?’ It’s more about just having a conversation with somebody,” says Melina’s friend and occasional volunteer, Kirsten Reynolds.
Nowadays, Melina runs several events per week, from singles nights to teambuilding activities for corporates and volunteering activities anyone can attend.
At the end of the night in Melbourne, the 250 singles have made over 10,000 meals and raised more than $18,000 for the city’s homeless. What Melina will discover as she collates the name sheets over the following days is that more than 150 of the singles are also now matched.
“I’d started these events with the aim of meeting somebody, but then I didn’t think it was very professional.” Until one guy she’d been cracking eggs and jokes with at a soup kitchen event added her name to his list.“I ignored it. He persisted.” She smiles. “We’ve been together nearly two years.”
–Rebekah White
