By CAMERON LUCADOU-WELLS
A GROUP of volunteers is opening its vans, homes and hearts to support surging numbers of refugees and asylum seekers in Greater Dandenong.
Friends for Refugees (FOR), based at Springvale Uniting Church, is a diverse mix: a former lawyer, a priest, a former journalist, a qualified architect, a former union organiser and a social worker.
It’s collecting food, mattresses and provisions to help provide for a “looming humanitarian crisis”, as journalist Trevor Grant puts it.
He expects thousands more asylum seekers will head from detention centres to community detention in the south-east from July 1, further stretching already-swamped relief services.
Last month, an overwhelmed Asylum Seekers Centre stopped registering individual asylum seekers on bridging visas for food assistance.
Mr Grant said Friends for Refugees was also a voice for the “voiceless” forced to “live on thin air”.
Living on a $200 weekly stipend, the asylum seekers in community detention are not allowed to work. They are given shelter but very few provisions for six weeks, while they find private accommodation.
The result are three or four-bedroom houses crammed with up to 17 people, sharing one toilet.
As previously reported by the Journal in March, a 20-week pregnant Iranian woman was ‘settled’ into an unfurnished house in Greater Dandenong. Without a bed or blankets, she was left to sleep on the floor.
Volunteers found her a mattress that she couldn’t afford to buy. Since the story was later detailed in the Sunday Age the group has been flooded with donations across Melbourne but has a shortage of storage space.
The group’s co-ordinator and former lawyer Helen Goodman said she was driven to help out of feeling “ashamed” at asylum seekers’ treatment — such as a nine-year-old boy driven to self-harm after four years in a detention centre.
Other FOR group members are Reverend Paul Creasey, Bill Deller, Sri Samy and Dwayne Leslie.
The group needs storage spaces, vans, drivers and administrative volunteers. To help, email helengoodman365@gmail.com.
All aboard tour
A TOUR of Greater Dandenong will signpost the refugee ‘journeys’ within the municipality next week. The ‘Journey of Hope’ bus tour stops at Lexington Gardens in Springvale — the site of a former refugee hostel that housed more than 30,000 — as well as Noble Park, the Afghan Maiwand Bakery, Dandenong Market and Dandenong library. The tour is on June 18, 10am-1pm. Bookings: 9239 5265.
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