Supporting community in this year of welcome

Refugee Week is an opportunity to celebrate the rich cultures and positive contributions refugees make to Australian communities. In these challenging times the theme for Refugee Week hosted by the Refugee Council of Australia is especially poignant - Celebrating the Year of Welcome.

Through our Ecstra Foundation Response and Recovery grants the Community Migrant Resource Centre (CMRC) and Australian Refugee Association (ARA) are helping their frontline workers continue to support the financial capability and resilience of diverse groups of refugees in Australia.

Future proofing services for communities

Community Migrant Resource Centre is based in Parramatta. It offers financial assistance and education services to support people from refugee and migrant backgrounds experiencing financial hardship or disadvantage. They work with individuals on securing employment, tenancy issues, payment plans, small business assistances, accessing utilities, and general financial management strategies.

Ecstra’s grant enables CMRC to convert some of their essential services to digital outreach, to build frontline workers connections with their teams and clients and to produce vitally important translated COVID-19 and financial literacy resources.

“In many ways, this pandemic has brought our team closer together. We needed to quickly respond to the immediate needs of our community and collaborate with other community groups to support migrants and refugees. We are ensuring we can share rapidly changing information in a reliable way that is responsive to diverse refugee needs,” says Melissa Monteiro, CEO of CMRC.

Finding new ways to connect online

Australian Refugee Association (ARA) provides settlement support services including targeted financial capability programs for migrant and refugee communities in South Australia.

Ecstra is supporting ARA to extend their services to isolated people, through computers and internet access to migrants and refugees and families experiencing financial hardship. This includes support to navigate online platforms such as MyGov, Centreline, ATO and financial providers.

Deb Stringer, CEO of ARA speaks of their work every day helping refugees and new arrivals settle into new life, saying that every year is a year of welcome.

“We are pleased to see this attitude embodied in the 2020 theme for Refugee Week. In our experience, the Australian community can be incredibly welcoming and generous, but this can be drowned out by a negative minority. Feeling welcomed is the first step towards feeling at home. Feeling at home gives someone the confidence to embrace opportunities to work, learn and establish a new life,” says Stringer.

“This pandemic has laid bare the yawning gap between the tech-rich and the tech-poor. Our priority is to ensure that services are easily accessible in a digital format. With the rapid shift to services online, we have had to make this process as seamless as possible,” continues Stringer.

Ecstra Foundation is a grant making charitable organisation committed to building the financial wellbeing of all Australians within a fair financial system. Ecstra is assisting community organisations with resources and support to help them talk about money, to navigate through this crisis and to build future financial security.