Minutes.
Attendance: Nooka was back on the door this week and his work was first class. In the words of Nooka, ‘Who ever did this last week has absolutely stuffed it up.’ Nooka could not get the square electronic payment system to work. He needed to login to the bowls club Wi-Fi and, fortunately, he had written down the Wi-Fi password. Unfortunately, Les had very efficiently hole punched Nooka’s piece of paper and filed it in the binder. Nooka spent half the meeting entering the password into machine before he realized that two numbers had been hole punched out of his sheet of paper. With some help from Craig, Nooka managed to get the square working at about two minutes to two. Somebody asked Nooka if he had any numbers and he started reciting the part of the Wi-Fi password that he knew.
Brendan casually observed that we had 16 members and three guests present. Our no doubt bemused guests were Doug (we still regard you as a member Doug) and Leah and Maddy from Brophy.
For security reasons, Les redacted part of Nooka’s Wi-Fi password with a hole punch.
Meal: Crumbed fish, salad and an amazing potato salad. 10/10.
Sgt Malcolm introduced your correspondent as stand-in President. The club was scraping the bottom of the barrel because James has Covid and Garry is on holidays. We wish James a speedy recovery. In reports;
· Matt thanked those members who participated in the Loved and Shared working bee.
· Boré thanked all those members who have purchased tickets for the End Polio fundraiser movie night.
· Bruce reported that he rode with Jeff and Allan 36km to Koroit and back on the weekend. He was able to report that they are bery appreciative of our efforts to get them back riding again.
· Bruce was also waiting on a medical report. We continue to think of Bruce and hope he gets good news.
· Lew informed us that Chris and Robbo are back in Brisbane now and should be returning home in the next two weeks.
· Les welcomed back Nooka and was pleased to see him back working his magic on the door.
· Nooka reported that he had ‘absolutely no idea’ what was happening with the footy tipping.
· Malcolm gave us an update on the Bool Music and Wine Festival. Garry is in Tennant Creek and, as far as this correspondent could ascertain, Malcolm seemed to indicate that the festival organisation is also up Tennant Creek while Garry is away.
Maddy and Leah from Brophy spoke to us about their work in the Housing Support and Linkage Program. They work in a multidisciplinary team and deal with clients who often have suffered trauma, have drug dependency problems, are criminalized or suffer from mental illness.
Brophy operates on a ‘Housing First’ principle that references Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Housing must precede addressing other needs such as employment, health and drug dependency treatment.
Leah noted that historically most homelessness in Warrnambool has been hidden, with lots of couch surfing and people sleeping in cars. More recently, rough sleeping has started to become more visible in Warrnambool’s CBD. A family will wait for up to three years for public housing, a single person will wait eight to ten years. 20% of rough sleepers are employed, 40% are women. They noted that from October to February it is very hard to find temporary accommodation for homeless people in Warrnambool. Backback beds are brilliant, but Brophy only receive four per year. Socks and shoes are common items supplied by Brophy.
Leah and Maddie noted that the Warrnambool City Council does not allow any free camping in the council area. Surfside 2 caravan park is left empty nine months of the year while hundreds of people are homeless.
Brophy’s ultimate aim would be to provide their own crisis accommodation, possibly by purchasing a local hotel.
We thank Leah and Maddie for taking the time to talk to us.
The barrel was drawn and our Charter President took home the attractive bottle of lightly fermented grape juice.
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