RACS wins NSW Humanitarian Award
The RACS Afghanistan Crisis Response Clinic was recently awarded Best Project as part of the 2022 NSW Humanitarian Awards.
The NSW Humanitarian Awards are organised by the Service for the Treatment and Rehabilitation of Torture and Trauma Survivors (STARRTS) and the Refugee Council of Australia (RCOA) to commend people who’ve made an exceptional contribution towards refugee and asylum seeker issues.
The award was presented by Her Excellency the Honourable Margaret Beazley AC QC Governor of New South Wales.
“These awards recognise and celebrate what is best of our community where there is a need in community,” Her Excellency said.
When the Taliban took control of Afghanistan, RACS immediately became a crisis response centre, fielding hundreds of calls from people within Australia as well as those in Afghanistan and surrounds.
RACS has been assisting people living in Australia from Afghanistan, desperate to help their family members who remain trapped there, as well as those recently evacuated and those that remain left behind.
We assisted people to contact the Department of Foreign Affairs and made as many referrals as possible to be considered for immediate evacuation or through the provision of (449) emergency visas.
We also recruited 5 additional staff members, and supported by our most Senior Lawyers, systematically recorded details of every caller and each of their family members or friends trapped in Afghanistan. We provided each caller with immediate advice, later following this call with a more in-depth advice session and triaging for more assistance where we identified people for either a family stream visa or an offshore humanitarian visa with strong grounds for success.
We stepped in as a sector leader to support those from the Afghanistan community in public advocacy, as well as collaborating with other community organisations calling on the Australian Government to bring people to safety through our support of the #ActionForAfghanistan campaign.