In country towns across Australia, groups of quiet achieving volunteers are making a massive difference in the lives of refugee families.
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Rural Australians for Refugees is an informal network of regional and rural groups supporting and advocating for refugees and people seeking asylum.
In the flat, sun-bleached western districts of Victoria, one of these groups has helped welcome African refugee families who have found employment, educational opportunities and connections into the local community.
Bonnie Carter helped to found the RAR group in Ararat, formally known as Grampians-Gariwerd RAR, after becoming concerned about levels of support from refugees and asylum seekers.
Since then, the group has partnered with migrant and refugee settlement agency AMES Australia to support settling refugee families.
"Through AMES Australia we've worked with families settling in town. The first family was a husband who came first and worked for six months in the abattoir before his family came up from Melbourne," she said.
"He wanted to get his kids out of Melbourne because they were starting to get into trouble. At the time, housing was a problem. It was during the pandemic, and the move was difficult.
"We needed three or four bedrooms for Mary and her kids, and that would have been expensive. Some of our RAR members are also members of the Uniting Church, and they suggested doing up the old Manse next to the church for the family.
Uniting Church council members poured in their time and energy fixing up the house to get it to a state that it could be lived in and rented.
They put in new carpets and flooring, painted the house and exterior and did a huge tidy up.
"RAR furnished the house through members' donations," Ms Carter said
The next family supported by Bonnie and her group were three brothers from Ethiopia.
"We had an incredible response, and we furnished their house as well as supplying kitchenware, linen and everything else they needed to stay in the town," she said.
"Also, one of our volunteers Paul Ruthven literally gave up hundreds of hours to make sure the brothers could get their driving licenses."
The three brothers were also keen to start playing soccer, and the RAR volunteers connected them with a local club and helped them acquire boots and equipment.
Bonnie said the episode prompted the group to set up a "sport support" for new arrivals to join local community groups.
"The boys needed to establish friendship with people their age and others needed to be connected to community groups, so we saw a need and we held a one-off fund-raiser and established the fund," she said.
"The fund is used to support these refugee families to join community groups - be it sport, or art or something else.
"The boys now have boots and a soccer ball and have started training," Bonnie said.
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