The Braidwood Life Centre, tucked between the basketball court and the veggie garden, has been a part of the recreation ground’s landscape for the past eleven years. Founded as a joint project of Braidwood’s three churches, and initially known as Braidwood Care, the Life Centre is now run by a board of eleven people, who come from different walks of life.

Staffed by volunteers, the Life Centre lends a hand to people who are experiencing unwellness, financial difficulties, or the pressures that come from a cost-of-living crisis. Its programs are designed to make life that little bit easier, especially if you’re on a low or fixed income, have a disability, or are experiencing social hardship.

Alongside a food pantry, the centre offers a Thursday morning advocacy service, and can provide relief in the form of petrol vouchers and community counselling. It’s also a welcoming place to just drop by and chat. The Life Centre’s president, Maria Bakas-Booker, is no-nonsense and warm, seeing her role as one that enables the centre’s users to form bonds of mutual support.

With a background in counselling, Maria has helped facilitate support groups at the centre, which were crucial to Braidwood’s recovery after the Black Summer fires, and emphasises how empowering the social connection the centre provides can be.

‘It’s about community helping community,’ she says. ‘We get people coming in with a box of food because they've got too much that week, or who bring in their eggs, or veggies from the farm. There is this is joy about everyone pitching in to help everyone else. It’s a beautiful sense of all being in it together.’

What role does the Braidwood Life Centre play in supporting the community?

Our main thing is food. We have a food pantry and try to make that as nutritious and fresh as possible, but according to different needs. Some people might be living in a car, others in a caravan, so we ask people how they are set up for cooking and what best suits their circumstances. We have different foods, and everybody leaves with a week’s worth of staples, including vegetables, eggs, bread, a meat voucher or some meat.

Before the pandemic, you had a weekly community lunch as well…

That was Community Eating Together. We ran it for eighteen months, and it was really beautiful. It’s too early to say, but we're looking at something to do with that soon.

The Life Centre also runs a number of social groups, such as the subcommittee Braidwood Says NO to Violence, and organises an annual Christmas lunch, amongst other things. How does this fit into the centre’s mission?

The first part of our constitution is that we support people who are going through financial distress or unwellness, but the second part is that we also have a focus on community development, where we run groups or other things that help the wellness of the community. It’s a holistic approach.

We currently run a ‘Head, Heart, Hands’ group for people who just want to meet with other people and learn things together. We've done music, we've done rug-making, we've done knitting, we tell stories. It’s on a Tuesday, and it's been going for about two-and-a-half years.

We also have a community counselling project which we were funded for till May 2024. We don’t know if we’ll get funding again. Some psychologists have wait lists of up to two years at the moment, and there are only a few counsellors in town. But so many people just need somebody to talk to.

That’s one of the functions of the Thursday Rooms, isn’t it?

Yes. We’re open 10am–12pm Thursdays, fifty weeks a year, to provide advocacy and confidential support. We have a phone number, which is 0437 989 993, and I've usually got that phone, and people can ring or they can just come into the centre.

When people want to volunteer, we have an induction period followed by ongoing training, because it's so important that the people who work with us are welcoming people who receive people where they're at, with no judgement. And, you know, you've got to work on those things.

I’ve bought some of the garlic scapes you’ve grown at Braidwood Arts and General in the past, with proceeds going to the Life Centre, and I know you have been working with Dan and Jo there for a while now. Can you tell me a bit more about how this came about?

The collaboration came out of a shared philosophical framework: that all people deserve have access to pesticide-free, healthy local produce. The need steadily grows in Braidwood and surrounding villages for assistance obtaining nutritious foods.

With our food baskets, we offer vegetables sourced by Arts and General from local growers. We purchase a set weekly amount at wholesale price, and are often given extra that may be excess. It's such a privilege and honour to work alongside Arts and General in tending respectfully to our community doing it hard and sleeping rough, or those in rentals . with no income left for food. Our core values coincide beautifully.

We also have some local residents who provide baskets of home-grown veggies and fruit, along with eggs, and a group of seven volunteers organising events like our Community Bee and cook-ups. We have held three of these so far, and the outcome of this evolving project is still taking shape.

As part of this project, we’ve spoken with past as well as present members of Braidwood’s many groups, to get a sense of their recent histories and learn how they’ve navigated change. The Life Centre’s president for 2025 is Carol Benda.

Get in touch with Maria and Carol, and learn more about The Life Centre.

0437 989 993

admin@braidwoodlifecentre.org.au

braidwoodlifecentre.org.au

facebook.com/braidwoodlifecentre

Braidwood Life Centre.

Plumwood