The Foundation, through its seed funding to the Asian Women
at Work Association, played an important role in the successful FairWear
campaign, a campaign which resulted in fairer wages and better conditions for
outworkers employed in the clothing and textile Industry. Other projects
supported by the Mercy Foundation have included programs for refugees and
asylum seekers and educational, environmental and indigenous projects
throughout Sydney, New
South Wales and across Australia.
Founded by the North Sydney Sisters of Mercy in the late
1980s, the goal of the Foundation has always been to focus on issues that
impact on the most disadvantaged people in our communities. The main aim of the
Foundation is to change the structures that contribute to social inequity
rather than responses that don’t challenge the systems that sustain
disadvantage.
In a review of the Mercy Foundation in 2007, the Sisters of
Mercy and the Board decided that the future direction of the foundation would
be to work towards ending chronic homelessness. Sound impossible?
There is now some great evidence from the UK, the USA
and Canada
that it is possible to plan to end chronic homelessness and with some
substantial results. The idea that there should always be a group of
vulnerable, usually traumatised and sometimes very unwell people sleeping in
our streets must be challenged. It has been successfully challenged elsewhere.
Early in 2008 a new CEO of the Mercy Foundation was
appointed. Felicity Reynolds began
work in late March and things are already well underway.
Felicity, who used to manage a community and homelessness
services unit at the City of Sydney
is not new to the area or to the issues. She has seen first hand the impact of
poorly resourced services, lack of affordable and appropriate housing and the
lack of support services for some of the most vulnerable people in our city.
Last year Felicity visited North
America on a Churchill Fellowship, investigating programs that
have successfully assisted chronically homeless people. She knows that there is
no one magic solution to ending homelessness, but there are a range of
successful permanent housing programs and other strategies that are getting
great results elsewhere in the world.
Already the Mercy Foundation has become a founding member of
the Australian Common Ground Alliance. This new group also has a new Patron,
the Prime Minister’s wife – Therese Rein. Ms Rein has openly expressed her
support for Common Ground and visited the New York
organisation when she was in the USA earlier this year.
The Alliance will be helping
to develop new supportive housing initiatives across Australia.
The Mercy Foundation is also currently working with a number
of other interested people and organisations to try to implement the first
Common Ground initiative in Sydney.
Felicity is working closely with Councillor Marcelle
Hoff, from the City of Sydney,
also a passionate supporter of the Common Ground approach.
The Mercy Foundation recently made a full submission to the
Federal Government’s Green Paper on Homelessness ‘Which way home?’ Everyone
associated with the foundation is excited at the possibilities and support the
new government’s decision to do something about homelessness.
In May, the Mercy Foundation co-hosted with the
Schizophrenia Fellowship of NSW, a roundtable discussion for senior government
and non-government representatives with an interest in homelessness. The guest
speaker at this event was Mr Philip Mangano, the Executive Director of the
United States Interagency Council on Homelessness (USICH).
Encouraging local businesses, services, government agencies
and others to work together to end the disgrace in their communities, USICH has
been instrumental in supporting more than 300 local communities to develop 10
year plans to end homelessness. Mr Mangano very eloquently clarified the
problem: “If humanitarian gestures, compassion and charity could have ended
homelessness, they would have by now. It is time to do something different,
something that solves it, not services it.”
More information about homelessness and the Mercy Foundation
The Mercy Foundation’s new website will be online very soon.
It will include information on the Sisters of Mercy and their work in the
community and provide resources on homelessness and ending chronic
homelessness. Keep in touch with these activities by visiting www.mercyfoundation.com.au .
If you would like to support the work of the Sisters of
Mercy through the Mercy Foundation contact them on (02) 9699 8726 or email
executive@mercyfoundation.com.au .
Source:
South Sydney Herald August 2008 www.southsydneyherald.com.au