By Casey Neill
A $200,000 grant will boost a Dandenong community support service.
The Antiochian Community Support Association (ACSA) is based at St Paul’s Antiochian Orthodox Church.
Reverend Father George El Khoury welcomed the Community Infrastructure and Cultural Precincts (CICP) program cash from the State Government.
“This grant here is a great help for us to be able to finish what we have started to do,” he said.
He was referring to an incomplete refurbishment on a hall at the Pickett Street site.
Fr El Khoury said the finished space would become a community centre for all Arab-speaking communities in the region.
The church bought the former post office distribution centre in 2002, and has been renovating it space by space since then.
It’s among only four Antiochian churches across Melbourne and caters to the South East, attracting about 200 to 250 people each Sunday.
ACSA, a community welfare organisation established in 2003, is non-sectarian and non-political, and aims to encourage participation and integration.
“Our common goal is not religious. It’s mainly social,” Fr El Khoury said.
“The main idea is to have the community – regardless of what religious background they are – to mingle together.”
He hopes the new space will also host a free weekly meal for the homeless.
He said the grant required the project to be finished within the next 12 months.
Dandenong MP Gabrielle Williams said the CICP funding was about creating spaces and places where Victorians could feel a sense of belonging and acceptance, as well as contribute to multiculturalism.
“I’m so pleased to see Dandenong play a part in that,” she said.
She said the Afghan Australian Initiative also received $25,000 for a feasibility study into building an Afghan Australian Cultural House.
