Donations needed for Homelessness Week event in Mandurah

HOMELESSNESS Awareness Week is coming to Mandurah next month and donations are needed.

WestAus Crisis and Welfare Services has co-ordinated Homelessness Awareness Week in Mandurah for several years.

It is the biggest event of its kind outside Perth and will be held on the eastern foreshore near the rotunda on Thursday, August 9.

This year, more than 40 local services and businesses will be providing information, clothing, food, toiletries, haircuts, entertainment or activities for the homeless and others who wish to be involved.

Passages Youth Resource Centre will hold coach surfing time trials at noon. The coaches have been decorated by local young people and organisations.

The event aims to ensure the community is aware homelessness can happen to anyone and that not all people experiencing homelessness are visible.

Many are living with relatives, friends or acquaintances, in shelters, transitional housing, couch surfing, camping or sleeping in cars, in sheds or other improvised dwellings.

Twenty five per cent of the homeless are under 18.

Donations of new or nearly new clean blankets, doonas, sleeping bags and food can be made at Coast FM on Mandurah Terrace.