Creating a safe place for the homeless and disadvantaged

Thanks for your donations the Lazarus Community Centre is able to provide a safe place of unconditional welcome for the homeless and disadvantage people in the Geelong region that provides facilities for showering and clothes laundering, as well as entertainment such as TV, games and computers.

Lazarus Community Centre received a $7,500 grant from the Give Where You Live Foundation to help support the homeless and disadvantage.

Someone who has been supported by Lazarus Community Centre is Anthony.* At 20 years of age, Anthony has experienced homelessness and its effects.

For Anthony, it’s not just the food, shelter and entertainment offered at Lazarus Community Centre that has helped him. But rather, he believes that Lazarus were able to provide him with the crucial skills and stepping stones to create a healthy future for oneself and the surrounding community of homeless persons.

Lazarus Centre assisted by SalvoConnect has helped me to achieve the body weight I was before homelessness; this may not seem like a big deal to the ordinary individual yet how crucial this is for future development to the individual is beyond words.

They offer all some shower and clothes’ washing services to help get the ones with little opportunity to become competitive applicants for their directed pathways in life.

Since visiting Lazarus, Anthony has achieved a work placement, has taken up an opportunity to study, and safe accommodation – and learnt many lessons about himself.

“With beautiful services like haircuts and clothing and references to job networks or mental health services the Lazarus Centre has offered help mentally and physically.

The staff and volunteers at the Lazarus Centre consistently and graciously provide each of us who enter here their full nourishing support; no matter how busy their schedule they always prioritize a person in need to give them the love and support.”

*Not his real name

Above: Lazarus Community Centre’s Michael Nolan and with the Foundation’s Tash Meagher, Celebrating the centre’s first birthday in June 2018.