By CASEY NEILL
SPRINGVALE stalwart Merle Mitchell is the first person to receive a Greater Dandenong Community Hall of Fame Award.
Councillors selected her for the Australia Day honour which is designed to recognise a community member who has shown outstanding and sustained involvement in community life.
Merle was born in Dandenong in 1934 and has lived in the municipality for most of her life.
She trained as a kindergarten teacher and settled in the developing Sandown Park area in 1961.
Limited services prompted Merle to become an active lobbyist. She helped to plan kindergarten facilities across the City of Springvale and establish Sandown Park Primary School.
Merle was a steering committee member for the Springvale Community Aid and Advice Bureau (SCAAB) and she’s remained committed to it for more than 25 years.
She played a vital role in establishing Springvale Neighbourhood House and the Family Mediation Centre and shaped state and federal social welfare policies through roles with the Victorian and Australian social service councils.
In recent years Merle has spearheaded efforts to recognise the Enterprise Migrant Hostel in Springvale and the role the 30,000 people who lived there from 1970 to 1992 had in shaping the city.
She and other volunteers recorded the hostel’s history through an exhibition and website, named a rose in its honour, and installed a rose garden and sculpture on the old Enterprise site.
The council has recognised Merle as a Free Person of the City and a Living Treasure.
In 1991 she was made a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) in the 1991 Queen’s Birthday Honours List and received the Promotion of Multiculturalism Award at the Victorian Senior of the Year Awards in 2012.
