VOLUNTEERS

Mercy Refugee Service recruits, trains and supports volunteers to assist and support refugees and humanitarian entrants settling in Australia. For more information about this project, please browse through the links below:

Volunteer Project

Under its Department of Immigration funded Community Links project, Mercy Refugee Service recruits, trains and supports volunteers to assist refugees and humanitarian entrants to settle in Sydney. We aim to support refugees who are particularly vulnerable, such as those who do not have strong community linkages, those who are suffering ongoing trauma, those whose grasp of English is limited, women and children and those who have very large families.

We presently have an extremely dynamic team of about 100 volunteers, many of whom are right now providing vital support to refugees in Sydney.

Recruitment

Volunteers working with Mercy Refugee Service are from a wide range of cultural and social backgrounds and ages. Mercy Refugee Service encourages diversity within its volunteer team, in the belief that we all have much to learn from each other.

Training

Mercy Refugee Service requires that volunteers complete our 18 hour training program, held over a full weekend and two weekday evenings.

This training program provides an overview of the refugee situation worldwide, the situation facing refugees in Australia, how to support refugees to build their own community linkages and the role of a volunteer working with Mercy Refugee Service.

The volunteer training program is usually held twice a year.

Placement

Volunteers are assigned to a refugee family or individual according to gender, language, location and other factors, as appropriate. Volunteers usually visit the refugee family or individual once a week or more often, depending on issues arising. Volunteers are required to report back to the Project Co-ordinator on all activities undertaken to assist the client.

Volunteers are typically placed with a refugee family for a period of up to 9 months, depending on the refugee family or individual's needs. Volunteers provide families with practical assistance that is aimed at developing the family's own skills to operate confidently and independently in their new community.

Examples of assistance include helping families learn how to use public transport services; contact and negotiate with real estate agents; practice English; seek employment; and access mainstream services such as schools, Centrelink and doctors and hospitals. In addition, volunteers assist in building the family or individual's links with their community by, for example, joining them on social outings and facilitating their involvement in groups and forums which allow for further development of social networks.

In addition to the practical assistance volunteers provide, they are also able to offer friendship at a time when often the refugee family are struggling with many new changes in their life and are feeling quite isolated. This friendship can often be what gives the family confidence to extend their social networks more generally in the community.

Support

Throughout their placement, volunteers have regular contact with the Project Coordinator through a formal monthly reporting system, along with ongoing phone and email support, and regular volunteer meetings and training seminars. Our practice of working with volunteers has been informed by Volunteering NSW guidelines and by our own volunteer base over a period of seven years.