The Australian Greek Welfare Society (AGWS) has been a big winner in the Victorian state budget, being allocated $360,000 for the next four years.
The money will see the AGWS increase services to the newly arrived and to the increasing number of elderly members of the Greek community.
AGWS CEO Voula Messimeri says the money goes a long way to help the organisation deal with a ballooning number of clients thanks to the Greek economic crisis.
“These funds will be well utilised helping to ease the dual burden that AGWS has been struggling under in the last three to four years, with service demands by an increasingly ageing, numerically large community, and on the other hand, by a significant group of people newly arrived from Greece.”
AGWS hopes to implement a new program that will look at collaborating with other Greek Australian organisations like the Greek Orthodox Community of Melbourne and Victoria.
Overall, over the next four years, the Labor government has allocated $121.6 million to multicultural programs and initiatives.
$13.2 million has been provided to support newly arrived migrants and refugees to help them participate in the community without feeling excluded.