Building community: e-Pocket’s partnership with the ASRC

e-Pocket are proud to partner with the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre.

e-Pocket are proud to partner with the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre (ASRC). This reflects our commitment both to involving ourselves with vital causes, and helping to provide value for the broader community. We believe partnerships such as these can help with long term prosperity, and hope our contributions will have a positive impact on the lives of the people the ASRC helps each and every day.

It was a pleasure to meet Naomi Adeyanju from the ASRC, who gave us a presentation on some of the wonderful things the ASRC does for people seeking asylum. Naomi helped us understand just how significant an impact the ASRC has had in the more than two decades that they have been in operation.

Meeting the local community

The e-Pocket team is extremely excited to visit the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre at 214-218 Nicholson Street, Footscray, VIC 3011, and to learn more about how the ASRC works, and what it does. We will be assisting with hot meal preparation for members and volunteers; a daily activity for the ASRC. This will serve as an opportunity to contribute in more ways than one, and help the community first-hand and face to face. This is a program made possible by the incredible staff at the ASRC, who provide more to the community than just food.

How did the ASRC grow?

The ASRC was founded all the way back in 2001 by Kon Karapanagiotidis, who realised that people seeking asylum were lacking the basic support they needed. From here, the ASRC began as a food bank in Footscray.

Despite not accepting any funding whatsoever from the government, the ASRC has remarkably managed to grow into Australia’s largest independent human rights organisation. Their staff and volunteers provide support to more than 7,000 people seeking asylum, offering more than 40 different programs that help protect them from persecution.

With such a dedicated team of volunteers, any support is of great assistance to the ASRC. With this in mind, we encourage you to donate to the ASRC or get involved today.

How does the ASRC help people seeking asylum?

Aside from their Community Food program, which services more than 1,200 people (nearly half of which are children), the ASRC runs a number of other programs as well.

For example, many people seeking asylum are unable to find a reliable place to live. So the ASRC’s Housing and Aid Program provides financial assistance for rent, utilities and crisis accommodation. Due to the current housing crisis, on average families require six weeks or more of crisis accommodation. Given most people seeking asylum lack both a rental history and a steady income, many simply cannot access steady housing, meaning the Short-term Accommodation Support and ASRC Rental Accomodation cohorts are invaluable to ASRC members. To put this into perspective, the ASRC provided 66,987 nights of shelter in the 2022/2023 financial year.

This ASRC support system is holistic long lasting. People seeking asylum in Australia have much higher rates of physical and mental health issues than the average Australian. This is often the result of trauma, prolonged poverty or persecution faced before they came to Australia. But the process of refugee determination can be long and arduous, and many people seeking asylum are unable to access healthcare whilst they wait to be processed. For this reason the ASRC offers a pharmacy program, a women’s clinic, an immunisation program, and even General Practitioners for people without Medicare. All of this assists in improving the health and wellbeing of people seeking asylum.

Furthermore, the ASRC offers a Human Rights Law Program which provides full legal representation to some of the most vulnerable people seeking asylum. It offers a specialist service that prioritises women and children fleeing violence, facing indefinite detention, and those with serious health issues.

These are just some of the many services the ASRC provides for its community. For more information, and to see how you can help, take a look at the ASRC website.

The e-Pocket and ASRC partnership

We thank Naomi, Kon and the entire ASRC team for allowing us to contribute to their work, and we look forward to fostering a strong relationship in the years to come.