ADRA Community Centre – Cannington

The ADRA Community Centre – Cannington supports, helps, and empowers those who are homeless and those in financial and emotional distress, thereby raising human dignity and helping families survive through their most difficult times.

The Centre achieves the ideal of relieving and empowering those in distress by operating several different community outreach programs throughout the week. These activities include Community Gardens, Cannington Emergency Food Programme, Cannington Soup Kitchen, Food Pantry, and Helping Hands for providing clothing. Currently, we are partnering with Orange Sky to provide wash and dry laundry services.

Opening hours

– Community Garden (Sun, 8am -12pm, Tues & Thurs 8am – 4pm)
– Emergency Relief Food Pantry (Sun to Fri, 8am -12pm)
– Mobile Laundry (Fri, 5pm – 7pm)
– Soup Kitchen (Thurs 9am -12pm, Fri 9am-9pm)
– Helping Hands Initiative (Fri, 5pm – 7pm)
– Potluck lunch every second sabbath (Sat 12pm-1pm)

ADRA Cannington Community Garden is a place where people are taught how to develop their gardening skills and engage with the community garden, a place that grows unique plants to serve the tastes of the multicultural communities of the Cannington area, and a place that demonstrates good Christian stewardship – of environment, of natural resources and of people. This garden has been described as a place of rest for mental and emotional recouperation.

In addition, the ADRA Community Centre – Cannington provides emergency food support to food distressed communities in Cannington and beyond. We receive donations from charity support partners such as, OzHarvest, SecondBite, Feed-it-Forward, Bright Sparqe, the Aussie Plant-Based Food Company and private donors. Throughout the week, we accept distress calls for food support and encourage as much as possible for recipients to come into the centre to collect support. If they are homebound, we offer delivery to directly support them.

Further, the centre operates a Friday evening soup kitchen providing a three-to-four course meal to those who are hungry and in need. The Centre’s services function as a focal point for social networking and engagement – thus providing a social relief place and overcoming loneliness. Food is normally collected and prepared over the course of two days. These activities take place in the kitchen hall and outside front lawn gardens. The hot meals are served out of a transportable food service van.

The Centre also operates the Helping Hands Initiative that offers clothing and bedding along with bric-a-brac provisions, and at times, furniture for disaster/emergency relief. This support is housed in a separate room attached to the church and a sea container. In the future, we wish to expand our storage capacity and grow this activity into an op-shop.

In addition, we are also one of the only Christian work-for-dole services to provide a work experience program that offers participants the opportunity to build on their capabilities and contribute to their local community. We provide an outlet for retirees with services that create a place of community; helps in the transition from working to retirement; and assist them to maintain their Centrelink services.