Tuesday 8 September 2015

20. Refugees and Charities


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The current refugee crisis in Europe has caused both the New Zealand and Australian governments to consider increasing their humanitarian intake of refugees.

Both the New Zealand and Australian charity regulators require charities to identify if their beneficiaries include migrants and refugees, so I checked both countries' databases to see what assistance is likely from the charitable sector.

According to information published on 7 September 2015, I found that both countries have roughly the same proportion of charities that list migrants and refugees as one of their beneficiary groups - 12% of charities in Australia (6,561/53,541) and 13% of charities in New Zealand (3,551/27,056).

The New Zealand dataset also shows that 128 charities record migrants and refugees as their main beneficiaries.  Eight of these charities (below) were registered in the last 12 months:
  1. Make Foundation
  2. Al Hayat TV Australia & New Zealand Incorporated
  3. Damuna Charitable Trust
  4. Christchurch Multicultural Council
  5. English Language Partners New Zealand Trust
  6. The Asian Network Incorporated
  7. God's Ministry Christian Church
  8. St Mary’s Indian Syrian Church Palmerston North
 
Hopefully, with so many charities listing refugees as beneficiaries, there will be capacity to help with the increased number of refugees that will now be coming to both Australia and New Zealand.

Further reference

You can find more data about charities on the following sites:
www.data.gov.au
www.charities.govt.nz
You can also follow my regular data insights about charities on twitter at
https://twitter.com/StuDonaldsonNZ