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Refugee and Asylum Seeker Youth Holiday Program

During each school holiday period trained yconnect? volunteers take young people, between 12-20 years of age, from refugee and asylum seeker backgrounds on exciting outings around Melbourne.  It’s a great way for refugee and asylum seekers from a wide variety of backgrounds to meet other young people who've shared similar experiences. Volunteers help plan activities as well as joining in the fun, and are able to meet people from different cultures while working with other fantastic yconnect? volunteers!

 

 
Homework Club Program
 The ‘Homework Club’ is a tutoring program for primary school children run by yconnect?, where volunteers help students with literacy, numeracy and other work projects. The program is directed at helping students from non-English speaking backgrounds, who might not receive homework support from their parents.

Homework Club has been running for over 8 years, involving three metropolitan schools and over 30 yconnect? tutors.  

Our yconnect? Homework Clubs operate at Abbotsford, Fitzroy and Richmond West Primary Schools. Volunteers tutor from 3:30 to 4:45pm on Tuesdays (Fitzroy, Abbotsford) and Wednesdays (Richmond West) during the school term. We ask that volunteers commit to two school terms for at least 80% of the sessions.

Benefits of the program include:

  • Providing the school community with a reliable extra resource for their children
  • Giving students positive young role models
  • Providing a safe environment for students to practice their language and social skills
  • Assisting the development of students literacy, numeracy and social skills
Melbourne Youth Justice Centre (MYJC) Sporting Programs
 yconnect? in partnership with the YMCA operates a sporting program within the Melbourne Youth Justice Centre (MYJC) on the third Sunday of each month. The program involves friendly games of soccer, basketball, netball or volleyball between young men at the MYJC and yconnect? volunteers. The aim of the program is to divert young people from participating in crime and providing rehabilitation opportunities through social and physical activity. Recreation based programs offer many benefits to young people such as improved self-esteem, positive social interaction and improved health.
yconnect? Food Rescue Program
 ‘Food Rescue’ is a program organised in partnership with the ‘FareShare' organisation, which operates a commercial kitchen in Abbotsford. FareShare coordinates the collection of unused perishable foods from a number of food wholesalers, restaurants, markets, etc.

Food produced by FareShare, with the help of yconnect? volunteers, supports over 60 orgnisations around Melbourne to provide free, healthy, nutritious meals to the hungry and the homeless in Victoria.

yconnect? provides regular volunteers to help One Umbrella produce nutritious and easy-to-handle food sources that these Melbourne charities can easily reheat and serve or freeze for future use. Volunteers are trained on the job by a supervisor and are required to complete a Food Safety training day which is provided free of charge.
yconnect? Social & Fundraising Events
 A major source of income for Red Cross is through its fundraising endeavors. Fundraisers ensure that Red Cross is able to continue providing essential ongoing community and emergency services. They also enable yconnect? to implement new programs throughout Victoria.

yconnect? volunteers organise and participate in fundraising activities throughout the year, raising money for Red Cross’ community programs. Previous years events have included comedy, movie and trivia nights which have been a magnificent success in raising essential funds for many different program areas.

Last year, the Annual yconnect? Trivia Night raised over $5000 for community programs in Victoria with the help of partner organisations, corporate sponsors and public donations. 

If you have an interest in being part of the fundraising and social committee or organising a one-off event - whether it be an awareness raising, social or fundraising event - contact the yconnect? coordinator below to get involved.
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