Welcome to my first advocacy statement as CEO of St Vincent de Paul Society Canberra/Goulburn.

Social justice and advocacy are at the heart of all that we do here at Vinnies. Alongside our work to support and provide services for those in our community experiencing poverty and inequality, we are also active in the advocacy space. We do this by amplifying the voices and concerns of those we serve for changes to be made through policy action. At Vinnies, we work in compassion and service with the many within our community who face tough times, and for whom our acts of service enable them to get back on their feet. Over the years we have built strong friendships and connections with many who have come to us from different countries to seek a new life of refuge in our country.

Often this new life presents new challenges, especially learning the language and culture of their new country. Children and young people face the additional challenge of understanding a new school system which can be dramatically different to that of their home country. Vinnies helps address these challenges through our Migrant and Refugee Program which supports children and young people from a migrant or refugee background to feel connected, safe, valued and empowered. We do this by being strengths based, trauma informed, and relationship focused.

The Migrant and Refugee Program delivers three initiatives:

Firstly, the Migrant and Refugee Program in Schools trains volunteers who visit schools to work 1:1 with primary and secondary students from a migrant or refugee background and who need additional support with their learning. We currently have volunteers working across 5 schools, and on average support over 50 students per week.

Secondly, in partnership with Libraries ACT, our DoNut Stress Homework Club offers drop-in homework support at Gungahlin Library on Saturday afternoons for primary and secondary students from a multicultural background. Our multilingual volunteers provide a wide range of support for students that includes fine tuning essays, maths tutoring and improving reading skills. Often the parents stay and practice their English with some of the volunteers.

We recognise the power of the arts to heal, to create space for self-expression and to explore identity. We have recently partnered with the Red Cross Humanitarian Settlement Program, the Multicultural Hub, and Libraries ACT to run free school holiday art programs for children whose parents are clients of Red Cross and the Multicultural Hub. So far we have run 6 successful art workshops that have been extremely well received by children and their parents. In the July school holidays we will be running a 2 day photography workshop.

Additionally, volunteers in our refugee support group, the Caritas Christi Conference, support families and individuals from migrant, refugee, and asylum seeker backgrounds within our community. Basic assistance provided by Vinnies includes help with accommodation, rent, food, fuel, medical and pharmaceutical needs. Accommodation is the most difficult problem to resolve due to the acute lack of housing or other suitable accommodation and unsustainable ongoing rentals.

We are working with two other refugee support organisations in particularly complex and difficult circumstances that involve assisting around 70 of the most vulnerable households with accommodation support and living allowances. This support is needed because the Australian Government continues to deny them a financial safety net if the breadwinners are unable to work. Thankfully the ACT Government assists by providing some financial support, but this will cease on 30 June 2023.

Given that these particularly vulnerable people are affected negatively by Australian Government policy and positively by ACT Government action, the Society advocates nationally for change and at the ACT level for continued support until the Australian Government scraps its unjust policies.

Most recently, members attended the Palm Sunday rally in Canberra calling for justice for refugees and people seeking asylum. At that rally, Zahra Hashemi Barat, a refugee from Iran who survived five years in the detention camps of Nauru shared her heartbreaking account of the mental, economic, and social challenges that her family have had to deal with over the last ten years. She recounted the impact on her children’s mental health and motivation in high school, knowing their current bridging visa status does not allow them to pursue a university education. This story does not sit in isolation and is just one of many our team of volunteers hear far too often.

At the national level, the Society is calling on the Australian Government to provide an adequate safety net for all people seeking asylum, which we currently support in the Canberra region and across the country. Our other key demands on the Australian Government are to:

implement a fairer process for all affected by the unjust fast-track process; and
resettle all people still subject to offshore processing and move people held offshore to Australia while they await resettlement.
make detention a last resort and improve the living conditions of those who must be detained for security reasons; and
reform the family reunion process and expedite implementation of the increased humanitarian intake, with a minimum intake of 20,000 people in 2023-24.

In our region, the St Vincent de Paul Society would like to see the ACT Government continue to help us support asylum seekers made destitute by current Australian Government policy beyond 30 June 2023, until the Australian Government introduces a proper safety net for them.

I encourage you to lend your support by raising these issues with your Members of the Legislative Assembly and Members of Parliament when you have the opportunity to as the policy solutions they create have a direct impact on those who come to us for daily support.

I’d also like to thank all our members and volunteers who support this work, and without whom we simply would not exist. If you would like to join our team of volunteers, please do get in touch with us at volunteer.cg@vinnies.org.au. We’d love to hear from you.

Lucy Hohnen
CEO, St Vincent de Paul Society Canberra/Goulburn

The Plight of Migrants, Refugees and People Seeking Asylum in our Community