3rd ¼ Review
Another jam packed ¼!
The amazing Louise Kanbashi held a huge work drive for Versa who raised, packed & donated 40 very full bags of emergency food supplies & that went to BayCISS & Grace Heart Community Church. All this year we have been holding food drives for these 2 local organisations who are facing a significant increase in requests for food aid.
We were lucky to receive a whopping 5,250 Fun Buns from Bakers Delight & passed on a few thousand to St Kilda Mums, The Good Vibe Society, Parkdale Pantry & AAAF. The remaining thousands will all be used in our many comfort packs & upcoming Xmas toy drive. We also received a much needed donation of dental items from Plunkett Orthodontics.
A donation of pet bowls, litter trays etc was made to 2nd Chance Cat Rescue and more packs for children and adults went to VACCA. The Avalon Centre also received a few carloads of goods. Ongoing aid went to Emerge for domestic violence survivors in a safe house complex. We are lucky to receive a grant from Community Bank Highett which allowed us to set up a sports therapy program for Emerge for the same safe house complex & for their support workers to use with families under their care.
Grants were won from Glen Eira council which will allow us to help SECASA with therapy tools for children in their care who have fled domestic violence & sexual abuse. A grant was also won from Community Bank Caulfield Park that will allow us to provide comfort packs as well as therapy tools to residents of the dementia facility Hammond Care.
We also thank Zoe Daniels MP for supporting our initiatives and rallying food donations for local organisations & warm clothing for the homeless. The lovelies at Moongala Women’s Community House have also donated some amazing hand made items that are vital for our packs.
The community at Mentone Grammar raised a considerable amount of food at their Xmas in July night for our ongoing drive which was a welcome surprise! The lovely families from Grade 2 at St Peters Primary also donated some much needed food.
We received a welcome donation of toiletries from Impact that went directly to more toiletry packs for the homeless. This year we have sent out several hundred of these vital packs, in this quarter they were sent to Fina A Penny & The Avalon Centre.
62 pairs of prescription glasses donated from the community were sent to U3A to be given to those in need, plus our 1st round of 20 used mobile phones went to DV Safe Phone to be repurposed for domestic violence survivors.
In under 24 hrs the community pitched in to help a lady who had lost everything in a house fire. Not a thing was donated that wasn’t needed.
A morning was held with Community First Responders who discussed CPR & the invaluable GoodSam program & thank Brad Rosewell MP for coming along & saving the test dummy!
There were multiple volunteer sessions (with a lot more to go!)& thank those who pitched in. We also thank Beta Sigma Phi who have been donating food ongoing this year & who invited Deb to talk to them about what we do at a recent meeting.
And last but definitely not least we thank the superhero’s in the community for voting for us in Commonwealth Bank Southlands community groups program which saw us win $500 that is going straight into packs we are currently making for children in need.
The final 1/4 for the year is full throttle & includes our annual online auction fundraiser which starts soon. And we already have aid relief planned to the end of 2024!
