OUR HISTORY

In early 2014 the Board of the East Malvern Community Bank- Bendigo Bank resolved to hold a Community Forum Titled "Bringing East Malvern Together". - Exploring ideas to make our community a better place to live.

On 8 October 2014 50 representatives of local groups and organisations were brought together at the East Malvern Sports Club to explore ideas and opportunities to improve community life in East Malvern.

In March 2016 a meeting was held at the Bendigo Bank East Malvern to establish a Men’s Shed and a steering committee was formed with Ernie Brigham as chairman. Peter Norman as the Chairman of the Bank facilitated a grant of $5000 to help with the startup and soon after it was registered as an incorporated organisation. Once this was done, we joined the AMSA – the Australian Men’s Shed Association and by November/December of that year, weekly meetings with guest speakers were being held at the Phoenix Park Community centre.

The requirement for a larger premises became evident early and after an exhaustive search by Graeme Summers a suitable space was found.

Graeme negotiated with the East Malvern RSL and procured the use of the old Men’s bowling area under the RSL building. Two rooms were occupied with approval given for the occasional use of the ladies bowls room. An additional room, the old appeals office was taken over in early 2019 as the membership of the shed continued to grow and space was at a premium in the original two rooms.

To help us along we had many donations of tools, equipment, timber, and furniture from local residents, RSL members, Bunnings, Peters Mitre 10 & other Men’s Sheds.

A kitchen sink and associated electrical work was carried out after a generous donation of $3,000 was received from the Rotary Club Chadstone/East Malvern.
June - August 2017 was also taken up with arranging the workbenches, equipment, shelving, cleaning & setting up donated equipment.

As our numbers grew, we opened on extra days of the week, & in 2019 it become apparent that we were fast outgrowing our 2 rooms.

In the middle of 2019 Stonnington Council granted us a new hall at 51A Ivanhoe Grove East Malvern, together with plans to have it refurbished. We continued to meet at the RSL premises until Covid 19 took hold of the country and we had our last formal meeting there on March 17th 2020, a Tuesday.

Informal working bees were conducted at the RSL site during 2020 while renovations were being done to the new shed in Ivanhoe Grove.
Finally, we held our first meeting there in late January 2021, 46 weeks after the previous meeting.

Our shed is open every Monday and Tuesday 9.15am to 12.00pm, Wednesday 9.15am to 2.00pm and Thursday by demand when our core group continues to refine the shed setup & undertake simple jobs of repairs for many local organisations. We enjoy coffee tea & biscuits for morning tea & a simple lunch on many occasions during the year

ANNUAL FEES

$60.00 PER YEAR, RENEWABLE ON JULY 1ST EACH YEAR.