By Mikayla van Loon
National Homelessness Week kicks off next Monday, with local organisations hosting events to raise awareness about homelessness in the Yarra Ranges.
Holy Fools CEO Neal Taylor said while many events had been planned throughout the week of 1 to 7 August, some have had to be cancelled due to rising Covid infections.
“It’s been a journey because we had a whole bunch of things planned and we’ve just had to cancel stacks of them and make a few other changes because of Covid,” he said.
“We really can’t guarantee everyone’s safety…so we didn’t feel like it was appropriate.”
Nevertheless, Mr Taylor said the launch event will continue online with a live stream at 3pm on Monday 1 August.
“The more the merrier of people who want to join in on Monday, just to hear from all of our local practitioners and people who are working with homelessness in the Yarra Ranges,” Mr Taylor said.
“So that’ll be the chance to listen to the speakers on Monday. It’d be good to just have people tune in and hear what they have to say and maybe learn a bit about what’s actually happening.”
Aiming to spread the message on homelessness, Mr Taylor said four banners will be positioned around the shire to make people aware of the week.
Alongside the normal Street Angels lunch that occurs every Wednesday, Mr Taylor said CIS Yarra Ranges will be providing a morning tea at it head office on Main Street.
“They’re having morning tea [from 10am] and then we’re going to do a sausage sizzle, which will be open to anyone.
“We’re going to move Street Angels over to CIS and hopefully that will get people talking about what’s going on.”
Mr Taylor said this year’s Homelessness Week theme of ‘To end homelessness we need a plan’ couldn’t be more timely for Holy Fools.
“It’s actually fitting in really well with Holy Fools. We have been working on revamping what our mission statement is, and our mission is now ‘to end homelessness in the Yarra Ranges by 2030’ in conjunction with our community and colleagues.”
To achieve this, Mr Taylor said there are two key things that need to happen: the first, a survey of all the organisations and services working in the homelessness sector and the second, a count of all the people sleeping rough.
“[We need a] survey of all of the agencies to see what they actually do as far as homelessness is concerned and try to find out if there’s any gaps in the areas, any overabundance of services in areas or if there’s anything missing,
“Then next year, we’re looking at doing a street count, trying to get more of an accurate picture of how many people are rough sleeping in the Yarra Ranges because at the moment we need the really hard, tangible, quantifiable data before we can actually start planning properly.
“So we love the idea that in homelessness, you need a plan and that’s part of our first step is to try and get the playing field worked out.”
To join the live stream on Monday 1 August, visit the Yarra Ranges Homelessness Week Facebook page.
