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Call on the Australian Government to expand and improve community sponsorship for refugees, so that more families can rebuild their lives in safety.

At the moment, people fleeing danger in their homelands have very few options to find safety. 

Community sponsorship is one solution.

Community sponsorship programs are government-run initiatives that allow everyday people to help refugees reach a new country and help them settle into the community.

Australia does have a community sponsorship program for refugees, but right now it’s slow, expensive and, the worst part – for every refugee sponsored by community, the Australian government deducts one place from its own humanitarian intake.

In comparison, the Candian government has run an effective community sponsorship program for over 40 years. Canadian communities have now helped an additional 280,000 refugees find safety on top of Canada’s humanitarian intake. 

With a working sponsorship program, Australians can welcome more refugees and their families as well. 

Thousands of people have already signed the petition, and together they have helped urge more than 30 local government areas to publicly support an improved community sponsorship program. The next step: get the Federal government to do the same.

Call on the Australian Government to expand and improve community sponsorship today.

 

 

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To the Honourable Minister Coleman and Members of the House of Representatives,

We recognise there are currently only a few pathways for refugees to find a safe home in Australia.

One of them is community-led resettlement through community sponsorship.

To fully harness community generosity that can help refugees, Australia’s sponsorship program needs to be designed in a way that encourages, not hinders, more people to take part, and that expands Australia’s current refugee intake.

It needs to be expanded.

It needs to be improved.

Right now, we have the opportunity to help celebrate the refugees in our communities and call for sponsorship of others who want to call our community home, when it is no longer safe for them to continue living in theirs.

These are people who are like us. Refugees are our neighbours. Refugees play in our teams. Refugees volunteer in our communities. These are people who have lost their homes, their loved ones and life as they knew it.

Our new neighbours are asking for our help. We are calling on you to build a more generous and more accessible Community Support Program.

It must:

  1. Not take places from others in need
  2. Provide adequate support and services
  3. Limit costs
  4. Allow community, family and businesses to act as sponsors
  5. Create more places for people in need of protection to settle in Australia

As a generous country, we can and should do more.

 

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