Helensburgh Help and 2508 Suburbs turns 10 this year and much of the Facebook group’s success can be attributed to its founder, Kerrie Blackwell.
Kerrie, a lifelong resident of Helensburgh, worked at the local Coles for 12 years before retiring to prioritise her family. Inspired by the many inquiries about community affairs during her time at Coles, she founded the Facebook group in November 2014 and it has fostered connections and provided vital support ever since.
“I’d be constantly asked, ‘Oh, do you know this?’ as I was serving people,” Kerrie said.
“I thought ‘This is just ongoing’, so I sat down on my Facebook page and thought, ‘Oh, I’m going to make a group up’.
“It’s a closed group, but you can still see it’s not a hidden group. People can get invited to it all the time.”
Today, the group has 6000+ members. It generates much monthly discussion, for example, in March 2024 the page played host to 825 posts, 4812 comments and 16,454 reactions.
Since the group started, Kerrie and her assistant admin, Kathy Scullion, have worked tirelessly to keep the group operating smoothly.
“We’ve managed to avoid a lot of unnecessary horrible comments and we’ve kept it a friendly and a safe sort of place for people,” Kathy said.
Most of Kerrie’s time is spent denying or accepting new members. A common problem that many Facebook groups face today is the onslaught of scammers. However, Kerrie is vigilant.
“I do the checks to make sure I see the person’s name, and I see where they live,” she said. “If I can see that they have mutual friends, I’ll message the friends and say, ‘Hey, can you vouch for this person?’ to make sure they live in Helensburgh.
“You don’t get accepted unless I see proof that you live here.”
Moderating poses other challenges and it takes diligence to juggle privacy and harmony.
“If it’s a friend or someone puts up a horrible post or gives out too much information, you have to draw a line, and I’ll message them and I’ll explain,” Kerrie said.
The group’s cohesion is thanks to well-defined entry rules, emphasising mutual respect among members, such as a rule about not bad-mouthing any local business online.
“You support your community, you support your shops and if you’ve got a problem, you go back to the shop,” Kerrie said. “You don’t put it on Facebook where we have 6000 members.
“For their income, one bad post about something, one customer complaint can really affect their business.”
Despite all the hard work it takes to maintain the group, Kerrie loves being able to give back to her community.
“I just like helping people and that it brings the community together,” she said.
Generous group members are known for rallying together to support various causes via creative fundraising efforts, such as organising Christmas hampers and collecting donations.
“I think it just says we’re a very strong community and if there’s something that needs help, we’ll get on it,” Kerrie said.
“We do another one for our dog rescue, for our local Country Companion Animal Rescue, where I often order Cadbury chocolates and I give them out to people who then sell them, give me the money and we have given them a cheque for a couple of thousand.”
If you live in the Helensburgh area or closely surrounding suburbs and are interested in joining the Helensburgh help and 2508 suburbs Facebook group, use this link.