Jenan Taylor
13 December 2023
Anglican congregations in Melbourne’s east are giving financial, housing, education and emotional support to a growing number of humanitarian refugee families under a new community sponsorship project.
St Thomas Burwood, St Hilary’s Kew and St Alfred’s Blackburn North are among six churches from a range of denominations that signed up to the program to provide hospitality, safety and a new beginning for people forced to flee their homelands.
An initiative of faith charity Embrace Sanctuary Australia and NGO Community Refugee Sponsorship Australia, the project aims to help local churches provide settlement support to humanitarian refugees over a 12-month period.
Embrace Sanctuary Australia chief executive Naomi Chua said the church members were heartbroken at the situation many forcibly displaced people were in, and wanted to help them in a tangible way.
Read more: Churches uniquely suited to help support refugees and asylum seekers
Ms Chua said members of her parish St Thomas’ decided to do this through teaming with congregants from St Hilary’s to provide wrap around assistance for a Middle Eastern family that arrived in November.
St Thomas’ parishioner the Reverend John Altmann said the church joined the initiative because it wanted to find a way to give practical support to people in the surrounding community.
Mr Altmann said St Thomas’ felt that working in partnership with other churches also increased the pool of skills and resources they could draw from to better aid the asylum seeker families.
When the opportunity to work in conjunction with St Hilary’s presented itself, the church decided to pursue it, he said.
St Hilary’s parishioner Ian Wallbridge said his church decided to participate because of its long-held interest in helping refugees settle in Australian society.
He said that related to the support St Hilary’s showed for 43 West Papuan people who sought asylum in 2006, and in the church’s Hope outreach program which sought to help people in need in the community, including refugees.
Read more: Refugee women walk from Melbourne to Canberra for freedom, permanent visas
Ms Chua said the project equipped the churches for the task through a range of resources including training in cross cultural engagement and trauma-informed care, as well as workshops to help them understand how their unique gifts could help refugees.
She said in the case of the St Hilary’s and St Thomas’ partnership, six households pooled their experiences, skills, time and resources to help the newly arrived family find housing and clothing, take them places, as well as provide a sense of connection and belonging.
She said the tasks were divided among the households so that each was responsible for a different thing, and didn’t feel they had too much on their plates.
Ms Chua said being able to personally welcome the refugees at the airport, walk alongside them as they adjusted to a new life and stand with them in their grief over what they left behind, was a privilege for the parishioners, and a way for them to live out their biblical mandate to help strangers.
“They went from not knowing how to go about helping refugees settle into the community to their entire church communities becoming involved in a process that has been both stressful and joyful,” Ms Chua said.
Read more: Worldwide refugee crisis looms over Walk for Justice
She said there were more than 110 million displaced people in the world, and being involved with the project gave the churches a deep appreciation of the scale and urgency of the problem, because they’d had to decide which family they were best placed to support.
They were now considering taking on another family, Ms Chua said.
Ms Chua said Ringwood Church of Christ, Bundoora Presbyterian and Flow Pentecostal church were also involved in the community sponsorship scheme, and that St Alfred’s Blackburn North was preparing to receive its first refugee family in January.
In November the federal government promised to increase its annual intake of humanitarian refugees to 20,000, with 5000 additional places for community sponsorship.
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