Good Neighbour
Good Neighbour is a program that connected local people with refugees and asylum seekers, who were new to the area and arrived without the support of their own friends and family. Volunteers hoped to help newly arrived refugees with the community and its services while building friendships. The Ethnic Communitiesโ Council of NSW was the official auspice of Good Neighbour in 2017, and supported the programโs Founder and Director, Nicole Yade.
The Impact
While working with refugees and asylum seekers, it became very clear to me that they had regular interaction with community service workers, but they were missing friends or โgood neighboursโ โ someone to share a coffee with and have a chat about normal stuff, family lief and everyday things, instead of their immigration legal status and so on.
Nicole Yade
Founder of Good Neighbour
The project was funded for 12 months through The Liveable Communities Grants Program. The Program Coordinator engaged key stakeholders, meeting with over 25 agencies including settlement services, local councils, schools, health services to promote the program and the services offered.
Over the grant period, the project trained and placed over 80 volunteers in the community. These volunteers were then matched to more than 80 refugees and asylum seekers in the second half of the year to help them on their settlement journey. Volunteers offer friendship, practical support, community orientation and English language conversation practice to ease social isolation and increase the wellbeing of newly arrived refugees. Dr Ramzi Barnouti OAM, Good Neighbourโs Volunteer Ambassador, assisted with every volunteer training session by giving a personal account of his lived experience leaving Iraq as a refugee due to persecution of his faith.
