At our last breakfast meeting we heard from guest speaker Rebecca Millard, Strategic Relationship Specialist from Catherine House sharing the work they do and updates about their new build. Some key messages shared were:
- Catherine House was the 1st women's only homelessness service in South Australia and remains the only recovery-based service for women experiencing homelessness
- There has been an 81% increase in requests for support in the past year
- There are 60 women on the waitlist for accommodation
- No one leaves the service to homelessness, leading to the average stay of 5-7 months in the longer-term service
- To help manage the increased need for support they have expanded their intake and waitlist support services
- The new 8 storey fit for purpose building is expected to open in early 2027 and will include 52 self-contained units providing a mix of crisis, transitional and long-term accommodation, a Women's Centre and 24/7 support, with much improved security.
This leads on nicely to the first of our Catherine House garden working bees which was held on Sunday 20th September. With Catherine House rep, Amy and her very handy husband, we had 14 volunteers come together for 3 hours of hard yacka. Thanks to Rotarians Rob, Paul, Liz, Lili, Fatemeh (and husband Reza) and 7 very hard-working migrants from Colombia, Argentina, Japan and Malaysia we completed the removal of the irrigation system, significant weeding, some plant removal and repositioning, hedging and lay out new weed mat for the 5 cottage gardens ready for next week. On Sunday 27th a new group will assemble to lay down the gravel/stone and a new bistro set for each garden to complete the low maintenance makeover.
Other things happening include that we are in the midst of purchasing new spiffy signs for our Christmas trees sales and designing new club shirts (a few options are in the works) with AI's help, which I will present at a meeting soon. Fred's Van keeps rolling on with another shift this Wednesday 23rd, followed by our dinner meeting on Thursday 24th which will be focused on action planning, led by Paul Jupp, as the next step in the strategic planning process. Please come along if you can as every voice present helps shape the direction of our club.
PS please save the date for our October dinner meeting on 22nd where we will have guest speaker, Mohsen Abdel Meseh, from the Australian Refugee Association come present to us about their driving program and swimming classes. This has come about through Erfan identifying a high need for both in the refugee community and bringing this to the Community Service Committee.
PPS our Christmas celebration has been confirmed for Friday 4th December at the South Terrace croquet club.
President Kirsti