Manlygees: Northern Beaches’ Refugee Support Group

Overnight, you, your spouse and your children become refugees, travelling thousands of kilometres until you reach safety – a refugee camp in a bordering country. You remain displaced there for 10 years. Your children remember no other life and schooling is sporadic. One day, you receive the news you’ve been waiting for. Your family has been granted a visa and soon, you’ll be flying across the world and landing in Australia!  As well as excitement, joy and relief, you also feel apprehension. You are starting your life again in a new country with a foreign culture and language. You don’t know anyone. Your children must restart school. You and your spouse need to find jobs and you all need to learn English to do this. 

You nervously step in arrivals at Sydney airport and… welcoming you is a group of local people. They’ve been preparing for your arrival for months and greet you and your family warmly. You’re driven from the airport to a temporary home they have set-up for you and in the following week, they help you buy food and new clothes, enrol in Government services, sign up to English lessons and show you around the local area.  This is the experience local volunteering group the Manlygees are planning to give a refugee family from the Middle East this November. 

The Manlygees are part of a new Federal Government scheme called the Community Refugee Integration and Settlement Pilot (CRISP). Under this pilot, groups of five or more ordinary Australians can sponsor a family who are referred by the UNHCR as refugees in urgent need of resettlement. The program is run by Community Refugee Sponsorship Australia, a registered charity with DGR status.

The Manlygees are a mix of local Manly people with one thing in common: they are horrified by the plight of refugees and want to do something that makes a difference. As you can imagine, preparing everything for the arrival of a refugee family takes a lot of planning! The group will support the family for their first 12 months in Manly. This includes organising temporary accommodation, furniture and household goods for three months, and helping to secure a lease after that. In the first few weeks, they will help them open bank accounts, buy new clothes, navigate public transport, shop at the supermarket and apply for government services. 

Over the next year, the Manlygees will help the family with whatever they need, whether it’s finding jobs, learning English, understanding the education system, getting driving licences or joining sports and activities. They will support practically, emotionally and financially over the course of the year and right now, are fundraising and looking for assistance from the local community.