Volunteer tradies from around Australia recently visited Lismore and worked alongside locals to restore essential plumbing to 71 households as part of the ‘Two Rooms & a Bathroom’ project we have been operating in partnership with the Reece Foundation, with the generosity of our local partners the Lismore Catholic Diocese, the Winsome, and Joel Jensen Constructions.
We are committed to helping as many people as possible so make sure you register if you or anyone you know still needs help. And, if you’d like to help out and learn some new carpentry skills while you do so (or if you already have them), we’d always welcome new volunteers!
Our Two Rooms project to re-sheet two rooms per household has so far supported more than 80 homes with a further 60 underway. The success of these two projects attracted a commitment from the recently elected Labor Government of $5 million to fund to the project. Our executive director, Elly Bird, welcomed this commitment.
“Our systems, our people and our partnerships are all in place and this additional funding commitment will allow us to ramp up our work and to help more people,” she said.
“We are grateful to the former Coalition Government for the support we have already received which has enabled some of our operational capacity for the last six months.
“Recovery should be locally led which is what we are doing, and we are grateful to Janelle Saffin for recognising the importance of our work and for her ongoing support over the last year; and we look forward to continuing to work with her.”
Completed Projects
Jessie’s house was almost completely submerged in the flood and her bathroom was destroyed. Thanks to the generosity of the Reece Foundation in donating a beautiful new bath, shower and vanity, and with the hard work of volunteer builder Sam and volunteer plumber Justin, she now has a gorgeous new bathroom, and the look on her face was priceless.
It’s important to note that this is not a renovation project and not everyone will get a brand-new bathroom. As with the ‘Two Rooms’ project, our mantra is ‘Repair to return’, which means we focus on getting people back into safe, secure and warm housing. In some cases, this means erecting walls for two rooms (hence the name). In others it might be as simple as fixing a toilet, or installing a new hot water system. We are doing the best we can with the resources we have to help as many people as possible.
The downstairs of Helen Bloor’s home was completely submerged in the flood, with the water reaching knee height upstairs.Under the direction of our Project Manager Grant the volunteer tradies fixed a leak in the downstairs toilet, and rebuilt the downstairs kitchen, including cabinets, sink, shelving, benchtop and plumbing.
“I’m really, really, super-grateful,” Helen said.
“This was all submerged (but) I’m really blessed. It’s really built for floods, this one. I got to keep my walls upstairs. It’s the horsehair-embedded plaster and it’s actually very water-resilient. I did not have mould problems.
“I had some fantastic builders – friend volunteers – and I did choose to get four half-walls taken out, but that was more because they were all situated under windows.”