In August 2008, when their youngest son, Adriel, was two, Annete and Vinojit Appathurai fled war-ravaged Sri Lanka as fighting between the army and militants escalated, and ducking for cover from gunfire became a part of daily life.
Vinojit’s sister was already in Australia and sponsored them to live with her in a Melbourne suburb. The family of five arrived with only their suitcases and, between them, they shared one bedroom with one mattress to sleep on.
Adriel, now nine, would scream through the night, Annete recalls. He and her other children, Enoch and Aaron, now 13 and 15 respectively, initially wanted to leave the cramped and impoverished conditions they could not comprehend and go back to their family home in Sri Lanka.
“Three of us slept on the mattress, and the other two on the floor, and that was during winter as well,” Vinojit says.
Life only began to improve for them when they contacted the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre, which provides advocacy, aid and healthcare to refugees and asylum seekers.
The centre’s more than 1,200 volunteers and 60 staff assist about 2,000 people each year, providing them with employment and training services, legal advice, food aid, medical care and social activities, and helping them to apply for Medicare and other benefits. Demand for the centre’s services has increased by 500% since March, largely thanks to federal government funding cuts to other organisations and a punitive asylum seeker policy.
“Adriel got his first toy here from them,” Annete says.
Says Adriel: “It was a motorbike I could push with my hands. There was also a kids’ zone at the centre where we could do activities and use the computer.”
Before they found out about the centre, life was a daily struggle. “We didn’t have any income or anything, the government benefits don’t come through straight away,” Vinojit says. “We managed like that for almost four months.”
His sister, who was unemployed and caring for her child with a disability, was unable to support them, so the family had to largely fend for themselves.
Staff from the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre helped Vinojit and Annete update their résumés and apply for work. Annete applied for and later completed a diploma of nursing and now works in the renal ward of the Royal Melbourne hospital. Vinojit works for a bank.
The family were also given basic items such as nappies, tickets to use on public transport, and stationery and textbooks for Aaron and Enoch’s schooling. In the meantime, through a friend in their church group, the family found a home of their own to rent – no real estate agents would rent to a family on benefits.
“The Asylum Seeker Resource Centre helped us a lot, in every way, not only materially but emotionally,” Vinojit says.
Says Annete: “They’ve given guidance to us in every way on how to live a life in Australia. We felt alone when we came here, but they provided moral support.”
Despite how difficult the conditions were initially for their children, Annete and Vinojit said the support from the centre meant they had soon settled and began to enjoy school and making friends. And they no longer want to go back to Sri Lanka.
Their former home, in the war-ravaged city of Batticaloa in eastern Sri Lanka, was no place for them, as the civil war which began in 1983 between the Sri Lankan army and the militant group the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam escalated. While Aaron, Adriel and Enoch may have been too young to understand the danger they were in, their parents are unable to forget.
In 2007 two helicopters carrying foreign diplomats were attacked by militants on the oval by the school where Annete taught English. The Sri Lankan army retaliated by ramping up attacks on the Tamil Tigers. Stray bullets would hit her classroom and Annete would cower with her students on the floor.
She would go home each night to her family and together they would suffer from “fearful nights”, Annete remembers, cowering as gunfire filled the air. “I try not to remember it,” she says.
The trauma of those years meant the family was in a vulnerable state when they arrived in Australia, and in need of the emotional and practical support they got from the charity’s volunteers. They were supported until 2009, when they were granted their permanent residency and no longer needed to rely on benefits and assistance from the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre.
But thousands of families still need help. “Cuts to funding for legal assistance for asylum seekers, plus tough changes to migration laws, have made it harder for people to navigate the process of becoming a permanent resident,” says the centre’s director of fundraising, Jana Favero.
“There are literally thousands of people who used to turn to other services now turning to us for help, because those services are stretched or no longer exist. This year for our Christmas appeal we have to raise $850,000, which is double what we had to raise last year and, to be honest, we’re not on track to raise that.”
But she said as Australia’s political environment became more hostile towards asylum seekers, it brought out the best in the broader community, who wanted to help them.
“It’s not that people aren’t donating,” Favero says. “There has actually been a groundswell of support for us as people recognise that deterrent asylum seeker policies and the toxic nature of debate is harmful to people.
“It’s just that defunding of the overall sector means there is more demand for what we do here than ever.”
Key to the centre’s work is enabling families to become self-reliant, Favero says. The Appathurai family now rent a home in Mill Park, in Melbourne’s north, and Enoch has been awarded a scholarship to attend Melbourne high school next year.
Now that they are secure, the family want to help others in the precarious situation they found themselves in back in 2008.
They use their fluency in Tamil, Sinhalese and English to provide translation services to other immigrant families, and want to share their story to offer hope to families who left their jobs and possessions behind to start from scratch in Australia.
“A friend in need is a friend indeed,” Vinojit says.
Annete no longer feels frightened when she hears a helicopter, which she used to associate with gunfire; and knows she can freely walk into government buildings, such as police stations, without fear, as well as travel around after dark.
Most importantly to her, her children are safe. “If we were to go and live in Sri Lanka again, I don’t know what would happen to them,” Annete says. “If they were to go out, I would never be sure that they would come back home.”
• Independent of federal government funding, the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre is the largest provider of aid and legal and health services to people seeking asylum in Australia. Its vision is for all people seeking asylum to have their human rights upheld and to receive the support and opportunities they need to live independently. The centre offers 30 holistic programs that protect asylum seekers from persecution and destitution, support their wellbeing and dignity, and empower people to advance their own future. For more information, click here
• The Guardian’s 2015 appeal is being administered by Charities Trust, a UK registered charity. Click here to donate
