National Week of Prayer and Action – Journeying Together
Reflections by Loloma Tonnochy
“There is nothing we want more for them than to provide a safe place to call home.”
We all have our own roles in which to contribute to ensuring that refugees settling in Australia are welcomed and able to feel at home.
It just depends on our individual contexts and what our unique talents, skills and time availability is.
My involvement supporting refugees commenced when I first started meeting newly arrived UNHCR recognised refugees 25 years ago – when St Vincent de Paul had a contract to provide housing support to recently arrived families. We set up the homes for people and worked together with them to make the housing feel like their own home. I have found over the years that we have always been able to form warm and friendly relationships immediately from the time of their arrival – and I think this is due to being volunteers from a Christian community. There is nothing we want more for them than to provide a safe place to call home and with the many resources of St Vincent de Paul we can often really make a difference to ensuring this.
Early on it became obvious to me that there was an additional need to assist families to move into their new life and community more fully. To engage with the community around them and build bridges across cultures. It was from this that we started a group of volunteers to begin this process of engagement. Our first call out saw us have 40 volunteers arrive wanting to help. This enabled us to set up a connection for each arriving family or individual with an Australian friend immediately upon arrival. This enabled us to increase the capacity of the program and provide more than we could when we first started.
The refugee families often came directly from refugee camps in Africa (predominately Sudanese in the early stages of our program) into Townsville, North Queensland, and were supported in their settlement by community members. It wasn’t always easy when they arrived. Neighbours weren’t always welcoming, and if the families had limited English they didn’t know how to engage with others in the community or where to go for what they needed. It could be an isolating experience for them, particularly when they had been used to living in a vibrant refugee camp with friends and community of the same/similar cultural backgrounds to share life and meals with. We found our roles as connectors with the community to be an important aspect of our program.
Our program – the Vincentian Refugee Assistance Program operates within the St Vincent de Paul community programs. Two volunteers go weekly into the home and assist with learning English or helping children with their homework – but it often develops into more than this. The volunteers might assist with reading the mail, taking people shopping or to pay bills, visiting in the hospital, introducing the family to the local library, teaching mums to make a school lunch, explaining the intricacies of a microwave, how to change a lightbulb, what is needed in a cyclone or flood event. The possibilities of support are endless. And friendships develop. We have also learned so much and grown in our understandings of other cultural practices and the journeys each individual made to get to Australia.
Through our accompanying we aim for people to become independent and successful in their new life in Australia. We realise that for them to have friends they can call on for help or advice is a great source of security and joy for them when they are settling into Australia. Similarly, for us as friends and guides – we also receive so much in return.
How can we support refugees in our own communities?
In Townsville, there are several groups assisting refugees – and if you have time to volunteer and assist a community group locally it can be so rewarding. Our group in Townsville is always happy to welcome more members as we know everyone brings their own “specialty”, skills, and experience to their contributions.
It might be helping people with IT issues, searching for and acquiring funding/grants for our activities, taking on the inductions for new volunteers, visiting new mums and their babies, or helping people get their learners licenses. The list goes on forever.
It can be so beneficial for all involved.
For the volunteer they feel they are helping in a positive way – and learning from the refugees we support.
For the families, they settle in well, find work and become part of the community.
When people ask me how they can help – it can be with something as simple as smiling and saying hello to newcomers on the street. This simple gesture can have an enormous impact on how welcome the individual feels within their new community.
Loloma Tonnochy is a long-term volunteer with the St Vincent de Paul Vincentian Refugee Assistance Program in Townsville, Queensland. For over 20 years she has supported newly arrived refugees and their families to access housing, employment, education and to connect with community.
As a key volunteer, she has coordinated training and supervision for other volunteers and arranged community events to connect recent arrivals with the broader community.
If you would like to support Loloma and the valuable work of the St Vincent de Paul Refugee Assistance Program in Townsville – to volunteer, donate or follow their activities contact: loma.tonnochy@svdpqld.org.au
National Week of Prayer and Action 16-18 September 2024