(Transcript from World News Australia Radio)
There are many forgotten people over the holiday season.
The women living in crisis accommodation, after being the target of domestic violence, are among those whose plight is often forgotten, or overlooked.
But, as Naomi Selvaratnam reports, one group has found a new way to offer them support.
(Click on audio tab above to hear full item)
This woman is afraid to be named.
When she and her children fled an abusive relationship, she spoke no English and had been abandoned by her community for leaving her husband.
"No one here really wants to be in this moment or in this really bad time."
She has no family in Australia who are able to help and the holiday season is a particularly isolating time.
"If there wasn't the support there it would really break things down. Because already the life was really bad."
Now things will be a little easier, for a while at least.
The New Day Box project is filling shoeboxes with gifts and messages of support.
Selina Ife is one of the founders of the project.
She says it was created to help women who ordinarily would be overlooked during the holiday season.
"What we felt was that there were a lot of charities that organise gifts for children, which is obviously fantastic but the mums themselves are often forgotten. So I think a lot of people do focus on the kids at this time, including the mums themselves, so we just wanted to give mums a little boost."
The group will send 500 gift boxes this year to refuges across Victoria.
But for those receiving a box, they say it's the support -- more than the gift -- that is important.
Even for this woman, who does not celebrate Christmas, the gesture is still appreciated.
"The project means a lot. Especially when it give from people, they really care. People, they really went through a lot of bad times. Broken heart, very bad life. It really helps them that someone's there and they'll be really thinking about them and make them feel confident."
Selina Ife, from the New Day Box Project, says the women's refuges have welcomed the initiative.
"We were talking to one of the managers who works at one of these domestic violence crisis accommodation places and she just burst into tears when we told her what we were planning and said, I don't usually get emotional but this is just going to mean so much. Some of these women have left with only the clothes on their backs and their children and they're trying to make Christmas special for their kids. And just to know that someone's thinking about them and just to have something nice at Christmas is just going to make a really big difference to them."
The Women's Domestic Crisis Service in Melbourne says the holiday season tends to be one of the busiest times of the year for their organisation, with a 25 per cent increase in the number of women seeking crisis accommodation.
It makes the donations and gifts given through projects such as this even more important.
Janine Mahoney is the CEO of the Safe Futures Foundation, which runs a refuge in Melbourne.
She says there needs to be greater awareness of the needs of families fleeing domestic violence over the holiday season.
"I think the more people that are in the community that are aware that there are women and children at Christmas and other special occasions, depending on their spirituality or their community's celebrations, that that's when they feel that isolation from family and friends, just to know that there's others out there in their community that will give them that support, it means so much to them."
And for the women receiving the boxes, it's the knowledge that someone, somewhere is thinking of them during the holidays, that makes the gift that much more important.
"I think it is great. It is not about the things, whether small or big. It's how much you see someone there is with you, you not be alone."
