See how your support changed lives this year

Thank you for your support of Australian Red Cross. This year, your generosity meant people in crisis could access the help they needed. From families finding safety in Australia to communities rebuilding after disaster, your investment reaches people at the moments that matter most.

Below are some of the people you've helped. Each story reflects what becomes possible when someone like you chooses to give.

Meet just some of the people your kindness has impacted

Your generosity walks alongside communities long after disaster

After going through his own bushfire recovery journey, Steve Pascoe played a key role in setting up the Disaster Recovery Mentors. Photo: Australian Red Cross / James Gilligan

Steve Pascoe lost his home in the Black Saturday fires of 2009. The experience changed him, and he couldn't look away from others facing the same long road to recovery.

Now a mentor with the Australian Red Cross-supported Disaster Recovery Mentor team, Steve uses what he lived through to support communities in the long months after disaster, sharing what worked, what didn't, and showing that recovery is possible.

"It's saying, 'I went through it and I'm still standing up and I can still smile and I can still be happy and it's okay'," says Steve.

When fires tore through the small community of Ruffy, Victoria, in January 2026, Steve and his fellow mentors arrived alongside locals who had already set up their own relief hub. Among them was former schoolteacher Anne Douglas. For Anne, the mentors brought reassurance at a moment when her community was still finding its feet.

Your continued support makes that kind of sustained, expert support possible.

Your support helped Samar's family find stability

When hostilities escalated in Gaza in late 2023, Samar lost her husband, her home and everything her family had built. Months of bombardment followed. Eventually, with her four children, she fled to Egypt.

In August 2024, they landed in Perth — safe, but facing an overwhelming road ahead. As a single mother with no English and four children under 18, Samar didn't know where to begin.

Through the Humanitarian Settlement Program at Australian Red Cross, she was connected with case worker Aatef, who spoke Arabic and helped her family navigate the services they needed to settle into Australia.

“At the beginning it was helpful, when you meet someone who speaks Arabic,” she says. “The doctor, assistance with translation. Children, schools - they help us with them.”

Today, her children are in school, she is attending English classes and a new life is slowly taking shape.

Samar arrived in Perth from Palestine with her four children in 2024. Photo: Australian Red Cross / Till Spielhoff

Your investment helped Anne-Maree respond to humanitarian need overseas

Anne-Maree Furner at the Syrian Arab Red Crescent / International Committee of the Red Cross Hospital in Al-Hawl, Syria, 2023. Photo: supplied

When Anne-Maree Furner arrived at her first deployment with Australian Red Cross in 2001—a field hospital near the Sudan-Kenya border during the Second Sudanese Civil War—she knew she had found her calling. The hospital received up to 60 patients at once, most with bullet, burn and shrapnel wounds.

More than two decades later, she is still going. In November 2023, supported by the Australian Red Cross team, she deployed to Gaza, caring for the wounded through relentless bombing and almost no sleep.

“I always think of the need that exists in these countries, and I always feel I have what it takes to go there.”

Your support funds the training, preparation and mental health support that makes deployments like hers possible.

As a new financial year begins, your gift today is an investment in lasting change.

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