| Temple Square is always beautiful in the springtime. Gardeners work to prepare the ground for General Conference. © 2012 Intellectual Reserve, Inc. All rights reserved. | 1 / 2 |
The plight of the homeless in Perth may be dire during the cold wet winter months. A worrying trend in recent years is seeing several homeless women and children as well as many homeless men on the streets, according to Sister Michelle Dunlop, a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, who initiated the Street Friends volunteer group some years ago to ease the plight of the homeless in Perth CBD.
An appeal was made to members of her local congregations for the used items that were no longer needed but which would be gratefully accepted by the homeless, such as blankets, pillows, jumpers, parkas, jackets, socks, shoes, backpacks, sleeping bags, towels and even handbags filled with toiletries.
The appeal was launched on Sunday 28 May and ran for four weeks. It brought a phenomenal response in the month it ran: 47 garbage bin-liner-sized bags full of donated items.The young men and women of the Madeley congregation met on Tuesday 27 June to sort out and separate all donated items and to re-bag them for easy distribution to the homeless.
Arrangements were made with Michelle to collect the re-bagged items on Tuesday 4 July. Jade Kendall from the Relief Society of the Ellenbrook congregation and Annette Tupaea from Relief Society of the Madeley congregation supervised the loading of the bags into a transit van. Church members will further assist with the distribution of the items to the homeless with Street Friends and other homeless support groups.
Michelle described the response to the winter appeal as “overwhelming”, saying “What a difference this will make to so many lives living such a hard life on the streets!”