Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has opened the new Vinnies sponsored Ozanam Learning Centre in Woolloomoloo, Sydney, which aims to empower and equip homeless people in a transition back to "sustainable independent living".
Mr Rudd says a new learning centre in inner Sydney will begin to tackle the underlying causes of homelessness, ABC News reports.
Mr Rudd has officially opened the Ozanam Learning Centre for Homeless People, set up by the St Vincent de Paul Society in inner Sydney.
Vinnies New South Wales president, Barbara Ryan, says the new centre aims to break the cycle of homelessness through education and training, ranging from reading and computing to the arts and cooking.
"We will bear witness to the gifts of hope, dignity, confidence and self-expression, and most importantly, sustainability," she said.
Mr Rudd says the centre "is a recognition that the time for just providing a hot meal and a bed is well and truly over."
He told an invited audience in Woolloomooloo today that it was an appropriate location in the suburb where the Whitlam government signed a groundbreaking agreement for the provision of public housing for low income residents in 1975.
"The mark of any great society is how it treats its weakest members," he said.
"If we have an aspiration still, as we could and we should, to be such a great society, the continuing test is how we treat our weakest members."
Mr Rudd said the learning centre's aim to provide practical skills and confidence to some of the most marginalised people in Australia fits well with the Government's plans.
With its dream kitchen, state-of-the-art computer laboratory, yoga room, music workshop and vast spaces for classes, counselling and therapy, the Ozanam Learning Centre will be the biggest of its kind in Australia, The Sydney Morning Herald adds.
Society of St Vincent de Paul chief executive, John Picot, espouses the "housing first" philosophy, which seeks to provide homeless people first with what they most lack, a permanent place of their own, then deliver mental health, recreation and other services.
"Our core mission is to assist the most vulnerable," Mr Picot told the paper, "and someone who is ready to move into housing is no longer in that most vulnerable state."
He said that chronically homeless people needed intense support to raise their self-esteem and hone their living skills before they could contemplate moving into the simplest flat or group house.
SOURCE
How the homeless help themselves (Sydney Morning Herald, 7/11/08)
'More than a bed': Rudd launches homeless learning centre (ABC News, 6/11/08)
Prime Minister Rudd opens breakthrough service (Vinnies, Media Release, 5/11/08)
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