Spring Appeal 2023

03 December 2024

Each year, thanks to the wonderful generosity of our friends and supporters, JRS Australia serves more than 3,000 refugees and people seeking asylum in Australia. We witness their struggles, resilience, and hopes.

We are also witnessing unprecedented severity of need amongst the people we serve, including spiralling food insecurity and homelessness. Funding attrition, cost of living pressures, systemic exclusion from welfare support and the protracted uncertainty and trauma experienced by so many who have sought Australia’s protection are all contributing factors.

I’m asking you to donate today, if you are able to, because your kindness has never been so needed.

We have previously shared with you the words of our staff member Maggie who spent several months homeless whilst seeking asylum.

“Every day more people seeking asylum become homeless with the increased cost of living."
Maggie, JRS Australia Staff Member and advocate for Refugees and People Seeking Asylum

Maggie has described how unsafe she felt when she was experiencing homelessness.

I was always scared of standing out in the street alone at night waiting to be let into a friend’s apartment.’

[People seeking asylum] have no safety net when we are in crisis and have to hope that charities can provide enough to keep us from becoming homeless.’

Maggie was able to travel to Canberra recently to ask the Government for a stronger safety net for people seeking asylum. 

I wish you could have been there to witness Maggie speaking powerfully to elected officials. She said:

‘I ask for your courage and compassion as you consider how you can better support people who have come to Australia seeking safety, only to have no home to go to.’

Please read Maggie’s powerful speech to Government by clicking here.

I ask for your courage and compassion as you consider how you can better support people who have come to Australia seeking safety, only to have no home to go to.'
Maggie, JRS Australia Staff Member and advocate for Refugees and People Seeking Asylum
Maggie and our outgoing Assistant Director Maeve at Parliament House in Canberra, alongside colleagues from the Asylum Seekers Centre and House of Welcome.

 

With your generous support we are making sure that our elected officials know that there is a very human face to cuts in government support for people seeking asylum.

In the meantime, your donation means Maggie and the rest of the team can keep giving frontline support to people who often have nowhere else to go.

Please donate today.

Thank you from the bottom of my heart for being part of this community.

 

In solidarity,

 

Tamara Domicelj
Country Director, JRS Australia