PM applauds online aid for homeless Australians
On Friday, 29 January, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull launched a new app and website for homeless Australians. The launch was hosted by The Salvation Army at Melbourne Project 614 at 69 Bourke Street, Melbourne.
AskIzzy.org.au * is billed as the Australia-wide ‘A to Z directory of homeless help’ and delivers free and anonymous information on housing, meal programs, counselling, legal advice, health and addiction services, etc. Listing more than 350,000 different services, AskIzzy.org.au can be accessed on mobile phones, tablets and computers.
Mr Turnbull described the site as ‘deep love combined with technology focused on the customer’ which, in this case, is the one in 200 Australians who are homeless every night.
Captain Jason Davies-Kildea, manager of The Salvation Army’s Victoria Social Programme and Policy Unit, told e-connect that he served on the advisory group to guide the app's development, along with ‘representatives from Council to Homeless Persons, Launch Housing, the Big Issue, Melbourne City Mission and the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre’.
The captain linked the app project to Melbourne Project 614 ‘to do some direct consultation and testing with the homeless people that come through our services in the city, [which] helped us to be in a position to host the launch’.
Captain Davies-Kildea said the ‘primary target audience is homeless people, but the app can actually be used by anyone, including social workers or members of the public who want to help someone they know by pointing them in the right direction’.
Many people may think that access to the internet, devices and electricity would not ‘be a given’ for homeless persons, but the captain said ‘one of the reasons that the app got up was a piece of research** that showed the vast majority of homeless people had a mobile phone and most of them were smart phones; these are now the norm for phone providers and often no more expensive’.
‘This shocks a lot of people (and creates a bit of judgment),’ he added, ‘but when you think about it, if you're homeless and transient, how else do you connect to the world around you?
‘If a housing opportunity does come up, how does the housing worker contact you?
‘Mobile phones are a lifeline, not a luxury, for homeless people.’
The Salvation Army is the largest provider of homelessness services in the country.
*The AskIzzy app project was led by Infoxchange, with support from Google, REA Group and News Corp. A number of other partners were also involved in its development: https://www.infoxchange.net.au/ask-izzy-partners
**A recent study by the University of Sydney and Australian Communications and Consumer Action Network showed 95% of homeless people have a mobile phone and of those 77% have a smartphone.)
Click here for more information on the launch