* 20 August 2025 *

Each year for the last few years, our executive team and many staff have volunteered with other organisations over Homelessness Week to help provide meals and support those doing it tough.

This year, we felt it was time to lead our own initiative – bringing the community together and making a direct impact through our networks.

We hosted our first ever food drive in support of Homelessness Week – with wonderful support from you.

In mid-July, we put out the call to our community and wider networks to donate non-perishable food items, which could be left at five locations – our four Residential Aged Care Homes and our Central Office in Hawthorn.

The response was extraordinary, reflecting the generosity of those connected to Vasey RSL Care and the veteran community.

Donations of food items were assembled into packs that were passed on to City of Melbourne’s Make Room initiative run by Unison Housing and cohealth and Community Support Frankston, two organisations that focus on supporting some of our community’s most vulnerable people, those at risk of homelessness or those who have been sleeping rough.

In total, we donated over 100 packs and were able to extend our support to a number of struggling veterans within our own community.

We were grateful for the donation of plastic tubs from Secure Corp, to collect the food items, for large contributions from Highett and Ringwood RSL sub-branches, to local Federal Member of Parliament Kate Thwaites for donating hygiene products to include in our packs, to Victorian State Upper House Member Sonja Terpstra for her large donation of food items and not least, to all the individuals who donated food and money.

“While there are too many people to thank individually, we deeply appreciate the way everyone came together in support of a common cause,” said Tamara Paton, Acting CEO and Senior Executive Officer.

Photos:

Top left: CEO Janna Voloshin (second from right) with Senior Executive Officer Tamara Paton (left) and Executive Genera Manager Residential Services Corinne Lyon, were helped by some of our V Centre Veteran Empowerment Program participants to put packs together to go to ‘Make Room’ and Community Support Frankston. 

Bottom left: each of our aged care homes and our central office collected packaged food items, generously donated by the members of our community. 

Far right: Tamara Paton (middle) with (from left) Councillor Davydd Griffiths, City of Melbourne, James King, CEO Unison Housing, Councillor Gladys Liu, Acting Lord Mayor, Chris Turner, Deputy CEO cohealth who accepted the packs to .