Wayside has recently implemented the Twilight Team which is a group focused on delivering a structured activities program and managing the drop in space to support the needs of people in the neighbourhood in the early evening. The team provide an invaluable service to our visitors between 5pm and 8pm each week night - one of the toughest times to be on the street. This is the time when most people are leaving work or study and heading home or out to dinner with friends and loved ones. For those without a job or purposeful daily activity and no support network, the early evenings are a very lonely and potentially self-destructive time of day.
In addition to fun activities, the Twilight Team provides a safe place for people to spend the evening and access essential services such as showers, a change of clothes and the use of a telephone. The Wayside Cafe also forms part of the twilight program, featuring low-cost, freshly-cooked meals.
Mitzi Quill, Twilight Team Leader, said that new program will focus on engaging people with fun activities. “We’ve been running the new program for just over a month and we’ve already seen people come to life as they take part in activities such as art, crafts and drama. We discovered that one woman, who used to spend most evenings at Wayside sitting on her own and not speaking to anyone, loves beading and can’t wait to take part in the craft activities. She chats to everyone and has the biggest smile on her face. It is great to see people show all these little sparks of life as we engage them in interesting activities. As the program progresses, we hope to foster the interests of people and support them to take on more responsibilities and even help them on the pathway to education and training,” said Mitzi.
The Twilight Team program is the only program that brings together visitors across all of Wayside’s projects – D2DL, Aboriginal Project and Wayside Youth. The Twilight Team offer a range of activities, including:
Movie nights
Bingo and games nights
Photography
Music
Drama
Arts and Crafts
Pamper sessions
To keep our Twilight Team operating, $75,000 will cover six
months of twilight activity programs for visitors to reduce social
isolation and loneliness. This includes staff costs, purchasing equipment for the different activities offered and providing occasional light refreshments.
Wayside receive very little government funding so predominantly rely on donations from individuals and organisations to keep our doors open for the thousands of people who visit Wayside for assistance in gaining equitable access to essential health, welfare and related services each
year.
We are so grateful for ICAP’s consideration of Wayside for the 2014 Charity Day and a donation towards the cost of the Twilight Program would be wonderful. As the Twilight funding is quite a large amount we have included an Appendix with other items that are part of our Wish List that may be more appropriate for the donation range.