If you happen to be sauntering along Gympie Terrace near The Islander this Saturday night, be careful you don’t tread on the sleeping form of a classy lady, no doubt in designer pyjamas, under a protective cardboard box.
That’ll be Lorraine Kenway, sleeping rough to draw attention to the plight of Noosa’s needy families and homeless people, and rather than trip over her, stuff some cash in her donation box, or better yet, a few tins of fruit or veg for this season’s Christmas appeal. Lorraine, founder and owner of Noosaville’s Classy Lady, has been providing stylish threads for ladies of a certain age for decades now, but more importantly, from her perspective, she has used her spacious emporium of fashion and homewares as a base for helping out people in our community in need of a hand, a number far greater than most of us who live in paradise can imagine.
The light globe moment for Lorraine came more than a dozen years ago when she’d been helping out with a nephew, an invalid with a young family who was struggling. She recalls: “My husband and I were driving home and I said, ‘There are more than just this family who need help.’ That week I organised a morning tea to talk about what could be done, and that’s how we started Santa’s Classy Helpers. Now we have hundreds of ladies on our list of volunteers.”
The general idea was to canvas clubs and community associations, businesses and Classy Lady customers for cash or in-kind donations to distribute among Noosa’s needy at Christmas, but Lorraine was adamant from the start: This was not to be the traditional Christmas hamper. “I wanted people in need to be able to stock their cupboards for the holiday period to take the pressure off, to allow them a stress-free family time. I’d seen first-hand what had happened to our nephew. He’d try so hard and just get a foot on the first rung of the ladder, and something would knock him back down.”
It was hard, year-round work at the start, but Lorraine and her growing team got the support of local businesses and clubs and corporations like Bank of Queensland and Woolworths. More importantly, as Noosa gradually became aware of the underbelly of poverty that is a growing reality, she got the support of the community.
Aid organisations like the Salvation Army, St Vincent de Paul and, more recently, U-Turn, helped identify the neediest cases. Says Lorraine: “And the school chaplains are really amazing because they know the families who need help but won’t ask for it. I think our community is becoming more aware of the situation. From my shop on Gympie Terrace I see men trudging along the river in the afternoons, looking for somewhere quiet to camp, and a few older women too. But our main focus is on the families and that’s not so visible. They might be in some kind of housing or in tents somewhere out of sight and mind, but there are a lot of them out there and in need, which is why this year we’ll be visiting Yandina caravan park and Pomona Showground.”
When Noosa Today reported on Lorraine and the Classy Helpers in 2021, it was at the height of the Covid pandemic, fundraising had been difficult all year, but “Lorraine and her team managed to pull off a minor miracle to bring together a virtual shop full of toys, food and toiletries to make Christmas a wonderful time for about 300 Noosa families in need”.
Last year it was almost 400. This year it’s already past that and still growing. Lorraine has tears in her eyes as she tells me: “Just yesterday I received 129 families in one go. I was given their details so that they can be given an invitation for the day at The J.”
The supervised shopping day at The J – this year on Tuesday 5 December – is run with military precision. Woolworths at Noosa Village provides the shopping trolleys, Noosa-Tewantin Lions Club runs the sausage sizzle and helps the traffic flow as around 25 registered families per half hour are helped up and down the aisles to fill their trolleys with everything from homewares to toys and fresh fruit and veggies up to the value of $1000, depending on the size of the family.
The total cost of this heart-warming gesture that means so much to people who have almost nothing is heading north to $500,000, and is only made possible by the broad community. Says Lorraine: “Just recently Reed and Co, the real estate people held a lunch and raised $11,500 in an afternoon. [Reported in NT 27 October.] That alone allows a dozen families to enjoy Christmas.”
Back at Classy Lady on Gympie Terrace, Lorraine Kenway is preparing her cardboard covering for Saturday night. She’s only slept on the footpath in front of her shop once before, several years ago, but last year she joined the St Vinnies sleepout on Main Beach with many others. She says: “That was wonderful, being with so many generous spirits, but this year I want to feel what it’s like for people who just curl up alone night after night because they have no other option.”
Donations to Santa’s Classy helpers drive can be made at Classy Lady or the Bank of Queensland.
