Meet our inspiring Member of the Month – Inala Community House. This dedicated organisation provides a wide range of support programs that empower children, families, and community members to thrive. From their inclusive approach to their strong community focus, Inala Community House is all about making a positive impact where it’s needed most. At Good360, we’re proud to work alongside them to help extend their reach with essential goods and resources. Keep reading to learn more about their incredible work and the lives they’re helping to uplift across their community.
When did Inala Community House join Good360?
We joined Good360 in October, 2019.
What programs do you use your Good360 donations for? Who does the program serve? How does it impact Australians in need?
We provide clients with access to our Good360 products across a broad range of our programs including:
- SETS – This program is focused on supporting recently settled migrants and refugees, empowering them to address any needs that arise throughout their Australian settlement journey.
- Neighbourhood Centres – ICH’s neighbourhood centres are open to everyone from the community and allow people to link in with essential services tailored to their individual needs. Through our centres we see large numbers of vulnerable people who are experiencing homelessness, DFV, drug and alcohol addiction and financial hardship.
- Healthy ageing – Hundreds of seniors engage in ICH’s healthy ageing programs each week. Often our seniors can experience loneliness, isolation, and financial hardship.
- Foster and Kinship Care – ICH supports many foster and kinship carers to look after the children placed with them by the Department of Child Safety. Often these children have complex needs and have significant trauma history which makes supporting them incredibly challenging for our carers.
- Family Intervention Service – works with families involved with Child Safety who are at risk of or have already had their children removed. This service aims to support parents to increase their capacity to parent safely.
- INFANT – a program dedicated to working with new mothers during the first 12 months with their babies. This program is specifically focused around improved nutrition, increased active play and reduced screen time.
Any many more.
Some examples of how we’ve used the donations across our programs over the years include:
- Christmas presents for children in foster/kinship care. Christmas is usually a very happy and joyous time of year for children however for children in care this isn’t always the case. Ensuring that they wake up on Christmas morning with a present can be hugely beneficial in helping to prevent them from feeling left out and isolated, and different to other children.
- ICH held a community giving day in which we collected a range of different donations and set up a shop-like environment where families who access our services could come and select the items that they liked and thought would benefit their household. There was no payment involved but by setting it up this way it allowed the clients to have some additional choice and control back in their lives. This was a very uplifting event as the only instruction provided was to “take what you need” and quite often we would notice clients trying to decide between a number of different items in order to make sure that everyone was able to get something and avoid anyone missing out.
- ICH has many mothers with small babies access our programs and it has been great to be able to provide them with access to items that are essential when you have a small baby such as dummies, bottles and wipes. It’s also been fantastic to be able to go one step further and provide the baby food blenders as well. These blenders fit so well with one of the key focuses of our INFANT program which is around improved nutrition.
What is your favourite moment/interaction that you have had with a client when utilising the Good360 product?
It’s difficult to highlight just one however one that does stand out is through ICH’s healthy ageing programs we provide themed days that are tied to particular countries. One of the events they decided to run for our seniors was Denmark Day. Throughout this event they served food from Denmark, played music from Denmark and also facilitated a LEGO-building session because LEGO is in fact from Denmark.
When the seniors first found out that this was an activity that they could participate in some of them were extremely apprehensive as many of them had never played with LEGO before. By the end, many of them were hooked and discussing what other possible sets they may be interested in building which was just incredible to see. The other benefit of the seniors doing LEGO is that it’s also great for maintaining their fine motor skills.
How does Good360 help your mission?
ICH’s vision is to see strong communities where all people are safe, valued and empowered.
Donations sourced through Good360 are extremely helpful as we continue to work towards achieving this vision.
What would happen if Good360 wasn’t here to help?
Many of the donated products that we receive through Good360 are items that our clients would never dream of being able to obtain on their own. Without the generosity of the donors and the tremendous work of the team at Good360, sadly our clients would simply go without and miss out on these positive experiences.
What is your favourite donation you have received from Good360? Why?
We’ve loved all of the products that we’ve received however below are a couple of standouts:
- LEGO – no matter your age, everyone loves LEGO. We’ve provided LEGO to young children, including a large number within the child protection system. We’ve also run LEGO programs with seniors which is great to help maintain their fine motor skills.
- Nike shoes and clothes – The products provided by Nike have been exceptional and our clients absolutely love them. New shoes and clothing of this quality are an absolute luxury to many of our clients and it’s amazing to see the looks on their faces when they receive it. We also see kids go to school without access to appropriate footwear for their sports lessons which we know is not great for their feet, ankles and knees in the long term.
How many lives have you impacted through Good360’s donations?
Good360 has supported ICH to make a positive impact on the lives of thousands of adults, children and young people over the years. This includes people of all ages, genders, races, religions, etc.
To learn more about Inala Community House and their incredible work, check out their website, Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn.
