When Melbourne's extended lockdown restrictions tightened their grip on daily life in late 2020, some of the city's most vulnerable families faced a stark reality: empty pantries, dwindling hygiene supplies, and little access to the health information they needed to keep their households safe. For hundreds of Somali and broader refugee-background families in Flemington and North Melbourne, Somali Community Inc. Victoria (SCI) stepped in — not with promises, but with practical, immediate support delivered directly to their doors.

The Challenge Facing Our Community

The COVID-19 pandemic placed an extraordinary burden on communities already navigating economic hardship, language barriers, and limited access to government services. Families in Flemington and North Melbourne — home to a significant concentration of refugee-background and newly arrived Australians — were disproportionately impacted. Many lived in high-density public housing, worked in casual or insecure employment that vanished overnight, and faced difficulties understanding rapidly changing public health directives issued primarily in English.

The hard July 2020 lockdown of public housing towers in Flemington and North Melbourne had already shone a national spotlight on the vulnerability of these communities. By December 2020, the need for sustained, culturally appropriate support remained urgent. SCI recognised that responding effectively meant going beyond generic emergency services — it meant showing up in ways the community trusted.

Food Relief Packages: Addressing Essential Needs

At the centre of SCI's December 2020 response was a targeted food relief program. Volunteers and staff carefully assembled and distributed food packages to families who could not afford essential groceries during lockdown. Each package was designed with cultural appropriateness in mind — including staple foods familiar to Somali and East African households — ensuring that relief was not only available, but genuinely usable and dignified.

Hundreds of families across Flemington and North Melbourne received these packages, with distribution coordinated to reach elderly residents, single-parent households, large families, and individuals with disability or chronic illness who faced the greatest barriers to accessing food independently during restrictions.

Hygiene Packs: Equipping Families to Stay Safe

Alongside food, SCI distributed dedicated hygiene packs to community members, acknowledging that hand hygiene and surface disinfection were among the most effective personal measures to reduce COVID-19 transmission. Each hygiene pack contained:

• Hand sanitiser — to enable safe hand hygiene when soap and water were not immediately available
• Disinfectant wipes — for cleaning high-touch surfaces in the home environment
• Face masks — supporting compliance with Victoria's mandatory mask requirements in public spaces

For many households, these items — which had become scarce and expensive during peak pandemic demand — would otherwise have been out of reach. By providing them directly, SCI helped level the playing field, ensuring that financial hardship did not translate into a heightened risk of infection for already vulnerable families.

Health and Wellbeing Sessions: Information as Protection

Distributing supplies addressed immediate material needs, but SCI understood that lasting community resilience required something more: access to accurate, culturally appropriate health information delivered in a trusted setting. As part of the broader COVID-19 community response program, SCI facilitated a series of health and wellbeing sessions for community members.

These sessions covered key topics including COVID-19 transmission and prevention, mental health and the psychological impact of prolonged lockdown, how to access telehealth and other health services remotely, and guidance on Victoria's public health directions. Critically, sessions were delivered in community languages — including Somali — by facilitators with deep cultural knowledge, removing the language and trust barriers that had led many community members to disengage from mainstream health messaging.

Providing food and hygiene supplies keeps families safe today. Providing accurate health information keeps the whole community safer tomorrow.

— SCI COVID-19 Community Response Program, December 2020

Attendees were also connected to additional support services — including financial counselling referrals, mental health services, and family support programs — ensuring that those who needed more intensive assistance were not left to navigate complex systems alone.

Part of a Broader Community Response

The December 2020 food relief, hygiene distribution, and wellbeing sessions formed one chapter in SCI's sustained COVID-19 community response program — an effort that ran across multiple phases of the pandemic, adapting to the evolving needs and restrictions facing Flemington and North Melbourne residents. The program reflected SCI's foundational belief that effective community support must be community-led: designed with, not just for, the people it serves.

SCI worked in partnership with local volunteers, community leaders, and health agencies to coordinate logistics, translate materials, and ensure distribution was safe, efficient, and consistent with applicable public health directions. The collaboration demonstrated what is possible when organisations with deep community trust work alongside government and health partners toward a shared goal.

The events of December 2020 were a reminder that crises do not affect everyone equally — but they also demonstrated that communities, when supported and empowered, can respond with extraordinary generosity, organisation, and care. Somali Community Inc. Victoria's work during the COVID-19 pandemic stands as a record of what it looks like to put community welfare first, even under the most challenging of circumstances.