Randa Beirouti is the Founder of Reaching Out In The Inner West Of Melbourne Inc (Reaching Out), a Footscray based charity that provides essential care to people in need.
Reaching Out is a service to people in our community who are experiencing homelessness or are generally really struggling. We provide essential items like home-cooked meals, non-perishable food items, fresh produce, meat, bedding, clothing and toiletries.
We are all volunteers. We’re a philosophically based spiritual group. We’re not a religious group. We operate from the premise of love for all, selflessness and giving support to those in need.
Reaching Out started in 2005. When I became involved about 16 years ago, we were providing food for about 30 people. When COVID hit, we saw our numbers increase quite dramatically, and they have since continued to increase.
The people we serve are coming from different areas of Melbourne, not only from the inner west. We’re getting international students who might be living in the city. People living in the outer west from Melton to Werribee. We’re getting people from Box Hill and northern suburbs like Craigieburn and Broadmeadows. We don’t judge. There are no restrictions on people coming to our service. If you’re going to wait in line for a few hours, then there’s clearly some level of need in your life.
Our service operates from Victoria University. It’s where we receive donations, sort and dispatch all our goods to our main outreach locations which include the Monday night service at the Nicholson Street Mall in Footscray from 5.50pm to 7.30pm, and at the Paisley Street Baptist Church on Wednesdays.
Residents of inner Footscray are really quite supportive of what we do. In Nicholson Street Mall, there are some traders that perhaps object to us being there. I totally understand how what we do might impact services and traders but we do take steps to minimise any disruptions. On Mondays, for example, we start at a time when businesses are generally closing up.
One of the challenges we face is attracting and keeping volunteers – though some have been with us for quite a while now. Aggressive behaviour in the mall can happen at times. But we have ways to ensure those people, and volunteers, are safely managed.
Giving and helping people is itself a reward, and it’s also the way I was brought up. My mum taught me always to give. My early childhood was in Egypt, we had very little, but I remember my mother would still make food and manage to bring things together to give to people that were in need.
I came to Australia with my family when I was eight. We were sponsored by my father’s siblings. It was very tough in the beginning when everything is so different. Both parents had to work in factory jobs, my mother for the first time. We lived for a number of years in public housing before my parents bought a place in Coburg.
Before committing myself to Reaching Out I worked as an economist, researching such things as aged care policy, kindergarten policy, immigration policy. Economics has a role to play in our society in terms of structures and policies but a response to the issues that impact the people who seek our help is more than economics – it’s about directly helping people in need, because people in need are quite vulnerable. The whole philosophy is to share and provide a service to people from a humanitarian point of view.
