Janna Voloshin Sleeping Out to Support the Homeless
4 May 2017
On a cold winter’s night in June, Vasey RSL Care CEO, Janna Voloshin (pictured) will be taking part in Vinnies CEO Sleepout, to highlight homelessness and raise money to help Australians who are struggling to access safe and secure housing.
Homelessness is a very real issue in Australian society:
- Over 100,000 Australians experience homelessness – not just sleeping on the street, but also couch-surfing, or living in a car or caravan, without a secure place to call home
- Each night, thousands of people stay in crisis accommodation.
- Each one has a story – job loss, rent increases, relationship breakdown, family violence, physical and mental health issues
- Many Australians are only one pay packet away from getting into financial difficulty
- Over 725,000 Victorians are living below the poverty line, far from the standards of living we have come to expect in our lucky country, and risk descending into crisis
For Vasey RSL Care, this is a topic close to our hearts, as our organisation was founded to offer support and accommodation to those in need – veterans from World War I and war widows from World War II.
Over the decades since, Vasey RSL Care has continued to provide homes to people who needed them, and has nearly 400 Independent Living Units (ILUs) for the ex-service community – veterans and war widows – in financial need. We are proud that we can help these individuals – people who have served our nation, or have been widowed by the service of their spouse.
Janna has worked in the not-for-profit sector for many years, and has come across homelessness frequently, among many different communities. As a migrant to Australia, she knows how important it is to have a place of your own, offering warmth and protection.
So Janna (who hates the cold) will be experiencing just a little taste of what it is like not to have the safety and warmth of a home… just for one night.
Janna will be one of many CEOs around Australia sleeping on a piece of cardboard for the night on Thursday 22 June.
So please support her participation and make a donation to Vinnies for the programs that give hope to struggling Australians.
Thank you.
The CEO Sleepout – What is it?
The Vinnies CEO Sleepout began as a local community venture in Sydney’s Parramatta in 2006, the brainchild of a local business leader, Bernard Fhon, MD of Tactical Solutions. With the help of Vinnies, business associates, volunteers and his family, Bernard held the inaugural event on 21 June 2006 at Sydney Olympic Park.
Since then, the CEO Sleepout has become a national event to raise awareness of the problems of homelessness and funds to work towards breaking the cycle of homelessness.
Vinnies says: “In 2017, the reality is that whilst we should celebrate all that we have achieved together, we must also remember that so much more still needs to be done.”
