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

You remain displaced for many 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 need to find a job and you all need to learn English to do this.

You nervously step in arrivals at Brisbane airport and… welcoming you is a group of smiling 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 The Welcome Project is planning to give a refugee family from Afghanistan this June.

The Welcome Project 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 UNHCR as refugees in urgent need of resettlement. The program is run by Community Refugee Sponsorship Australia, a registered charity with DGR status.

 

The Welcome Project are a mix of everyday local Brisbane Southside people with one thing in common: they know that Australia can do more to help refugees and want to do something that makes a difference.

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 Brisbane’s southside.

This includes organising temporary accommodation, furniture and household goods for three months, and helping to secure a long-term home after that. In the first few weeks, they 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, The Welcome Project 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. They will support them practically, emotionally and financially.

Right now, The Welcome Project are fundraising and looking for assistance from the local community.

HOW YOU CAN HELP

Please help The Welcome Project reach its fundraising target by making a tax-deductible donation here: https://shoutforgood.com/fundraisers/the-welcome-project

The Welcome Project welcomes other offers of support, including in-kind donation of goods for the family as they settle in our local community.

Especially, the Welcome Project is seeking suitable long-term rental accommodation for the refugee family from mid-2023.

If you think you might be able to help, please contact Group Coordinator Catherine Grant: cathyfgrant1@gmail.com

We are an approved Community Supporter Group (CSG) participating in the CRISP facilitated by Community Refugee Sponsorship Australia. The CRISP is funded by the Australian Government Department of Home Affairs.