‘Buddy Bags’ packed with love to help children impacted by trauma

The Salvation Army’s Bindy Lupis (centre back) with the Alannah and Madeline Foundation team of volunteers and the Buddy Bags.

BY LERISSE SMITH

A simple random email has ignited a lifeline of comfort for children experiencing trauma.

A powerful new partnership between The Salvation Army Emergency Services (SAES) and the Alannah and Madeline Foundation will provide vital support and comfort to many children who have been impacted by trauma.

This collaboration has been made possible through the Foundation’s ‘Buddy Bags’ program, developed for vulnerable children across Australia who are experiencing crisis, trauma, or just doing it tough.

The bags are special: quality backpacks carefully designed to help meet immediate material and personal care needs of vulnerable children, and to give them a sense of security and comfort as the first step on their journey to safety and recovery.

With the Victorian SAES team attending an alarmingly high number of single-incident house fires across the state, these bags will provide vital comfort and care to children – not only those impacted by house fires, but by natural disaster events too.

“Often there are kids who have just lost everything,” said Bindy Lupis, SAES National Response Manager. 

“So, straight away, the buddy bags will be used heaps within Melbourne – and the team are stoked. I was able to share that with the Foundation and its volunteers. There have been many times in my different roles [that] I have supported families and children experiencing crisis and trauma. So, this is something very close to my heart. I can picture kids who will be getting this bag.

“It doesn’t give them back everything they have lost in their house or make everything better as they sit in an evacuation centre following a flood or cyclone. These kids have lost everything. But if you can hand them a bag with a teddy, a book, a few comforts, it tells that kid that they are seen, and they are heard, and they are loved, and it tells the parents that too. Often it helps the parents just as much as the kid.”

A single random email sparked the exciting new partnership.

Late last year, Bindy and the Salvos’ Emergency Aid and Development General Manager, Daryl Crowden, received a random email from The Salvation Army Corporate Partnerships department regarding their corporate partner, the National Australia Bank. The bank is a supporter of the Alannah and Madeline Foundation, and the charity wanted to know if their Buddy Bags could be used within the emergency services work.

It was a quick yes from Bindy as she knew they could find homes for them in evacuation centres or similar settings. 

But as time passed, the email conversation faded into the background until, suddenly, everything moved swiftly a few months later.

“All of a sudden, we received this email to say we (the charity) are packing 200 bags for you!” Bindy recalled.

A request then quickly followed – for someone to jump online to say thank you to the corporate volunteers who were packing them.

But Bindy had other plans.

Being in Melbourne, she informed them she would love to visit in person. It then led to meeting a group of corporate volunteers from Choice Hotels who were packing the bags at the Alannah and Madeline city premises, and the opportunity to share with them and the Foundation team the vital work of the emergency services, including the many house fires they attend throughout the year, including 16 in one week recently. The visit was an amazing experience, she remarked. 

Each backpack is filled with carefully selected items that focus on the physical, emotional, and mental wellbeing of children and young people, including new pyjamas, underwear, a toothbrush, a book, a trauma-informed toy – and an all-important teddy bear to cuddle for emotional comfort. 

The 200 Salvos Buddy Bags for children aged 0 to 16 are all packed and ready to go, with most in Melbourne to be used by the emergency services team for logistical purposes.

But their reach is growing.

A few boxes have already been sent to North Queensland, with the WA team expressing interest. When the opportunity arises via courier or vehicle transportation, the Victorian team plans to distribute some around the country. They will also be used in evacuation centres and recovery centres during disasters.

However, many of them will be used to support children impacted by house-fire incidents in Melbourne, a unique aspect of the emergency services role in the community.

Feedback from frontline service personnel who have already distributed several Buddy Bags at house-fire incidents has been powerful.

“It was a blessing for the child – and the family that received it,” Bindy explained.

“It was that excited moment in the middle of chaos, in the middle of a really awful night, that there was still this little moment of joy. Kids are still kids. And even in the middle of tragedy, they can get excited about something; their face lights up at a toy and a gift. It doesn’t change the tragedy, but there is that moment where you get a smile, you get a little light of a face, you get this little brief moment. So, it was really special.”

For the team members, the provision of the bags has been a much-needed gift as they often can feel really helpless amidst tragic situations, Bindy added, and often found themselves scrounging to find comfort gifts for children. But they have purchased colouring books, toiletry packs and other items – an amazing act of service.

“I think the relief for them (SAES team) to be able to just go, here is this beautiful bag of stuff that’s already been prepared, it was a real gift for them too,” Bindy remarked.

“And so, they then leave feeling a little bit better about what they have been able to give. Those little moments of joy that you see in the middle of, for some families, their worst night ever. To be able to have that little moment, I think, is really special. And there has been a few of those moments recently, which is really beautiful.”

Erin Mains, Assistant Response Coordinator in Victoria, recently gave buddy bags to a 13-year-old girl and her eight-year-old brother following a house fire at 2.30am. Erin texted Bindy later that day to say, “they were excited to get toothpaste!” and that their reaction to the bags was “gorgeous”.

A special mission is on the horizon, too.

Bindy would love the SAES team to spend a day with the Alannah and Madeline team to help pack the bags.

“I would welcome and love the opportunity to do anything we can to support them the same way they have supported us,” she said.

“Because ultimately, both of us – The Salvation Army and Foundation – have, as our priority and goal, the community member, that kid, that family in front of us, who need to know they are cared for, and they are loved and they are seen. To bring some hope into this really dark place. So, if we can work together on that, it would be great.”