Please Help Refugee Resettlement in Australia

An estimated 108 million people worldwide have been forced to flee their homes mostly from Syria and Afghanistan but more recently from Ukraine and Palestine.

Please help support a refugee family moving to Australia and more specifically resettling in Woodend and surrounding rural communities. The program is run by Community Refugee Sponsorship Australia, a registered charity with DGR status meaning your donations are tax deductible.

Our group 'Woodend Refugee Resettlement' is a mix of Macedon Ranges/Woodend people with one thing in common: we are horrified by the plight of refugees and want to do something that makes a difference.

Imagine your home being so unsafe that your family can no longer live there. Overnight, you, your spouse and your children become refugees, travelling thousands of kilometres until you reach relative safety - a refugee camp in a bordering country.

You remain displaced there for ten years. Your children remember no other life and schooling is sporadic.

One day, you receive the news you’ve been waiting for. Your family has been granted a visa and soon, you’ll be flying across the world and landing in Australia!

As well as excitement, joy and relief, you also feel apprehension. You are starting your life again in a new country with a foreign culture and language. You don’t know anyone, your children must restart school, you and your spouse need to find jobs and you all need to learn English to do this.

You nervously step in arrivals at Melbourne airport and… welcoming you is a group of local people.

They’ve been preparing for your arrival for months and greet you and your family warmly. You’re driven from the airport to a temporary home they have set up for you. In the following week, the group help you buy food and new clothes, enrol in Government services, sign up to English lessons and show you around the local area.

This is the experience local volunteering group 'Woodend Refugee Resettlement' is planning to give a refugee family sometime in the near future.

Woodend Refugee Resettlement Group is part of a new Federal Government scheme called the Community Refugee Integration and Settlement Pilot (CRISP). Under this pilot, groups of five or more ordinary Australians can sponsor a family who are referred by the United Nations High Commissioner as refugees in urgent need of resettlement.

As you can imagine, preparing everything for the arrival of a refugee family takes a lot of planning! The group will support the family for their first 12 months in Woodend or within the Macedon Ranges.

This includes organising temporary accommodation, furniture and household goods, and helping to secure a long-term home after that. In the first few weeks, we will help them open bank accounts, buy new clothes, navigate public transport, shop at the supermarket and apply for government services.

Over the next year, our group will help the family with whatever they need, whether it’s finding jobs, learning English, understanding the education system, getting driving licences or joining sports and activities.

We will support the family practically, emotionally and financially over the course of the year. Your donation will go directly to financially supporting the needs of the refugee family and the Woodend Refugee Resettlement group will provide all the practical and emotional needs of the family for a minimum period of 12 months. Your support is vital and very much appeciated.