Ms Reardon, from helping people with disabilities get employment to her role with the Young Women's Christian Association [YWCA] and for the last eight years with the Shoalhaven Neighbourhood Service, has been doing important and sometimes unnoticed work in the local community.

Sady Monday was her last day as Community Coordinator with the Shoalhaven Neighbourhood Services as retirement and other challenges beckon.

She leaves an impressive trail of achievement behind her.

Her career in the community sector spans 28 years and most of it was spent working in and helping people in the Shoalhaven region.

She did spend one year working in the Wollongong area.

Ms Reardon, in the early 1990s, started working locally for a job placement agency, Essential Personnel, helping people with intellectual disabilities get jobs.

She said there were not many local community services when she first started in the field in the Shoalhaven.

Ms Reardon also worked for Shoalhaven Advanced Industries and headed up their employment agency, helping people with intellectual disabilities, which was later expanded to include other disabilities, get employment.

She served for a period as Shoalhaven Advanced Industries' general manager and said working in the community sector comes with its challenges but it also had its rewards.

"Starting out where I did with Essential Personnel was really personally satisfying," she said.

Helping someone achieve their dreams, find employment and stay in the job gave her great pleasure.

"Some of those people I know still work in that job or still have paid employment over the long term and that is pretty amazing," she said.

Ms Reardon left Essential Personnel to become the Nowra based YWCA because she wanted another challenge.

Arguably, it was during her time with the YWCA, for around seven years, where Ms Reardon's work in the community sector became more prominent.

She oversaw a lot of program development during her time at YWCA.

"Lots of things were happening there [at the YWCA] and lots of exciting stuff and plus I was also able to work with young people and I really enjoyed that," she said.

She loved the vibrancy offered by the YWCA but she just can go past the last few years as a community coordinator with Shoalhaven Neighbourhood Services based in The Park Road, Nowra as a career highlight.

"Coming here was one of the best decisions I ever made because this is an organisation that really believes in what does," she said.

"It has great values and from the board down the organisation really cares about the local community and you get that sense as a staff member.

"We are a tiny organisation but we achieve an amazing amount of stuff."

She said recently working with the Anti Poverty Committee was one of the best things she did.

"It was a fantastic opportunity to work at an advanced level at a high level with government departments, while also working at a grassroots level," she said.

"We are always measuring what we do and looking at what have achieved ."

In her role, she has seen an increase in young Aboriginal people graduating from school and getting into university, plus significant improvement in some people's health outcomes.

Ms Reardon, in a growing area like the Shoalhaven, said you would always need community sector workers.

She said the neighbourhood services, which was open to all members of the community, would always provide a vital role.

Her position is ongoing and she will be replaced.

Ms Reardon said if someone wanted a job that would make a real difference in people's lives then they should give the community sector a chance.

The community sector also gives people the chance to work with people from all walks of life

"It [community sector work] can be really great fun. If you love meeting people then community development work would be perfect for you," she said.

Ms Reardon said she made her decision to retire simply because the time was right.

She will do some study and has other areas of life she wants to devote her energies into.

In the future, she has not ruled out becoming a community volunteer.

She would like to thank the people from the anti-poverty group, Maxine Edwards, her neighbourhood services manager and many others for their help and support over the years.

"I would really like to thank the Shoalhaven community because I think despite all this negative stuff we get I think that the Shoalhaven community is quite frankly really great," she said.

Her last day was Monday.