It’s been a “miraculously successful” year for Sydney Uni Young Vinnies who serve the homeless community in Sydney’s inner city. Bridget Spinks discovered what motivates these 20-somethings to reach out.
TWO Saturdays a month, a group of uni students fires up the barbecue in a public park to make breakfast for Sydney’s homeless community.
They call it “Brekky Van”. To have access to the park and funding to buy the eggs, milk and bacon is a dream come true for the revitalised Sydney Uni Young Vinnies (SUYV) club that had to work hard to get the venture off the ground.
Initially there was a lack of funding and doubts over whether the uni students could get enough volunteers, but SUYV knew they had to find a way.
Once the St Vincent de Paul Society received approval from the City of Sydney Council to hold the event in the proposed public park, the students obtained funding support from the secular campus’ union. The University of Sydney Union subsidises the Society for each member that attends the event. But instead of going to the students, this money buys the supplies for Brekky Van.
“Brekky Van wouldn’t exist without the support of the Union,” says incoming 2010 president and second year arts student, Kieran Walton, 25.
From 8.30am, men and women are already assembling in Alfred Park just metres from Sydney’s Central station. They’re looking forward to the arrival of the van, the barbecue and the students. It doesn’t arrive until just after 9.
Chris is a volunteer actor with Milk Crate Theatre and living with attention deficit disorder and bipolar. While he describes himself as “extremely creative, extremely imaginative,” he says he finds it hard to hold down a job because “little mistakes add up to a big mistake”.
He came along to Brekky Van because a friend told him about it. That’s how people know about it; word of mouth.
As soon as the St Vincent de Paul van pulls into the park, the students jump out and unload the barbecue. They fire it up and it’s all hands on deck. Apart from budgeting and organisational problems one of Chris’s biggest problems is loneliness.
“I’ve been single for 14 years. Mission Australia help, Milk Crate help but it’s not the full package; it never will be,” he said.
“I don’t go to charity unless I need to. I leave it for others who may need it more [than me but] when I do go, I appreciate it.”
Every day many thousands across Australia live in a state of ‘homelessness’. The Australian Bureau of Statistics “does not have a definition for homelessness” but refers to a cultural definition proposed by researchers Chris Chamberlain and David MacKenzie in 1962, which divides ‘homelessness’ into three main sectors. Primary homeless refers to those without conventional accommodation who “sleep rough” on the city’s sidewalks or similar. Secondary and tertiary states of homelessness refer to those who live in boarding houses and those in transitional or emergency temporary accommodation.
In August this year, SUYV hosted a “Winter Sleepout” where up to 100 students, young adults, secretaries and graduates “slept rough” under the stars on the engineering lawns on campus.
They slept in sleeping bags on nothing but cardboard boxes. They had lettuce and cheese sandwiches for dinner and in the morning, eggs and bacon a la the Brekky Van. Local actors and musicians provided the entertainment including performances by a polynesian soft-rock group, Fasi Moe Afi, and the Milk Crate Theatre. For this, the Young Vinnies Society won the University of Sydney Union Clubs and Societies “Best Major Event” award for 2009.
The Winter Sleepout was the “turning point” for SUYV as “it resonated with people; [they realised] SUYV was a good society to be involved in” Kieran Walton said.
“People came [to the Sleepout] who had never been to night patrol and so from there, new students became volunteers,” he said.
Over the course of the year, SUYV has hosted over ten “night patrols” where the students gather in the middle of the city to provide tea and coffee to the homeless, one Wednesday night a month.
The club’s chaplain, Fr Dominic Murphy OP, has been to Night Patrol about four times. He primarily goes to provide pastoral support to the students, but has personally been changed by the experience and developed an admiration for the people they serve.
“I had lost a friend and I was broken, deeply sad and there were these people who were very worse off and still hanging in there. I felt very much at home with them and inspired, and it helped me lift the grief, they knew what brokenness was; OK some of them were on the street, some of them were in special accommodation but they were still alive people, just boxing on,” he says.
One evening in September at Night Patrol, the club’s president, Winey Suen, organised a “bake-off.” The young Vinnies brought homemade cupcakes and muffins and were encouraged to ask for clients’ comment on the cooking.
“[That night] they had 45 minute pure food conversations. People clicked with the clients,” Winey said.
As well as hosting the Sleepout, the regular night patrol and ongoing brekky vans, in March the club organised “Fire Up,” an appeal to raise money for those affected by the spate of natural disasters in February; the flooding in Queensland and NSW mid-north coast and the fatal Victorian bushfires. Seventy of the Young Vinnies stood up in lecture theatres to ask for donations. The club raised over $10,000.
While SUYV is a club whose origins are the good works of a 16th century French priest, St Vincent de Paul, a number of the students who participate aren’t motivated for religious reasons.
“No, I don’t have a faith – I don’t do the work for spiritual reasons. I do it for a commitment to social justice issues. [We’re all from] completely different backgrounds, but we’re working for the same purpose and same reason,” one of the Vinnies volunteers and outgoing club vice-president, Kate Allsop, 25 said.
The way some people living in homelessness can feel isolated or “get lost [in the system]” and the inherent associated sense of “unfairness and injustice” is what motivates her to help with SUYV. It’s also the reason why she can see herself working with this issue as a solicitor.
“Every time you find out the back story of one of the people we speak to at Night Patrol you realise that their lives up to a point were very similar to yours or your brother’s or father’s. And you realise that you don’t really deserve to be born into the circumstances you’ve been born into,” she said.
Kieran Walton, who is motivated by his Catholic faith, first encountered the St Vincent de Paul Society while at school at Patrician Brothers in Blacktown. The work is synonymous with an idea of “service and helping others”, he says.
“It’s an important expression of what we all should try and do: live for others, and serve others; there are plenty of ways you can do that, Vinnies is just one way of doing it.”
“If you don’t put your faith into action, how do you justify the I Believe?” he says.
For their chaplain, Fr Dominic Murphy OP, going to Brekky Van or Night Patrol is an “expression of self-giving love”, doing something for the other without any reward.
“That’s one of the noblest things about a person that makes us who we are; that we give ourselves to the other and in doing that we discover a deep contentment. It’s a lovely antidote to the selfishness. Generally, in a materialistic world, you measure yourself by the competition but here are people who can’t do that. They stand right outside of that. And here you are connecting with them,” he said.
“When a human person reaches out to them in friendship showing them that they matter, that reaching out to them in solidarity transforms both of you.”