SHARE OUR VISION FOR A COMMUNITY SPONSORSHIP SCHEME IN AUSTRALIA

January 2022

New program commencing July 2022

Thank you to the church groups and individual Australians across the country who rallied to help trail-blaze this new approach by signing up to be part of the Group Mentorship Program for newly arrived refugees.  Read more

For more information about joining with the groups involved in a new era of refugee protection in Australia, contact Community Refugee Sponsorship Australia (CRSA). 

July 2021

The Initiative has now become an incorporated Australian charity operating under the new name of ‘Community Refugee Sponsorship Australia’ (CRSA). The new organisation has launched their website: www.refugeesponsorship.org.au 

The CRSA website has a short video highlighting the great work that local refugee mentor groups and mentees have been doing over the last 9 months under the pilot Group Mentorship Program, a precursor to a future sponsorship program. View it here.

CRSA will be running the Group Mentorship Program again in 2021.  This will involve mobilising and training more local groups of volunteers around the country and then linking them with refugees in Australia in need of additional settlement support.  CRSA will host online public information sessions in July and August 2021, with the application process to join the program opening in August.

Information on the New Program Intake – Public Information Sessions can be found here.

Program Partners

Amnesty International

Refugee Council

Save the Children 

Welcome to Australia  

From Lisa Button, 

Director of the Community Refugee Sponsorship Initiative

I am delighted to be able to share with you the latest publication of the Community Refugee Sponsorship Initiative (CRSI):

A New Model for Community Refugee Sponsorship in Australia.  

This is our most comprehensive policy paper yet and is inspired by the Canadian sponsorship scheme which has seen more than 300,000 refugees welcomed and settled in Canada in the last 40 years through sponsorship by community groups (including faith groups, sporting clubs, universities and workplaces) in addition to those settled under the government-funded resettlement program.  As the name suggests, this paper outlines in detail CRSI’s vision for a future community sponsorship scheme in Australia and contains some useful diagrams and a helpful 12-point ‘Key Features’ section at the back.

Having just attended and hosted a number of briefings last week in Melbourne and Canberra with Canadian and UK colleagues from the Global Refugee Sponsorship Initiative, my CRSI colleagues and I feel confident that a community sponsorship scheme could be established in Australia in the near future and could grow to become a permanent feature of an enhanced Australian response to global forced migration. Such a scheme could enjoy support across the political spectrum by offering a range of benefits to people fleeing persecution as well as to sponsoring communities and Australian society in general.

Lisa Button

Director, Community Refugee Sponsorship Initiative

Connect with us FOLLOW THE TASKFORCE ON SOCIAL MEDIA   FACEBOOK   

CONTACT US

Telephone: (02) 9299 2215

Address: Locked Bag Q199,

QVB NSW 1230

This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.