YAL Cairns is YAL Facility with a purpose. YAL landed in Cairns in 1948, and the facility has had many iterations since its opening.
In 2020 YAL entered a sublease with the Qld Department of Communities, Housing and Digital Economy for full use of the site, and they brought in Anglicare North Queensland to run their QHome program. The program offers homeless people, including rough sleepers’ short-term accommodation and access to other services in a safe environment. YAL’s role on site is to ensure the site is maintained and the clients have a clean and dignified place to call home while they get back on their feet. YAL and Anglicare have worked hard to create a strong partnership which ensures clients are at the centre of all that occurs on-site. The revenue raised via the sublease covers all operational costs of our activities in Cairns and Perth Head office.
YAL Patch is an educational food garden located at YAL Cairns in partnership with Anglicare NQ, STEPS Education & Training. This project provides a broad range of skill development, literacy and numeracy, resilience, and well-being for people housed at YAL’s facility while they are rebuilding their lives through engagement in nature.
Understanding that education can come in diverse forms YAL Cairns has partnered with STEPS Education & Training for the YAL Patch project, to run literacy and numeracy sessions for the clients on site centring them in the garden and using it as a tool to familiarise the new skills.
Projects
A Brief Cairns History
In 1948 YAL obtatined the site we currently occupy on Martyn Street from Rotary. Being originally developed by the armed forces as a recovery facility, there was a lot of transformation to be done by the YAL team at the time.
But we were not deterred. The site sits on a piece of Crown land that was entrusted to us by Cairns Regional Council with one shared purpose in mind.
Provide community accommodation.
With some management and up keep to the existing buildings what has been inside them has developed and changed over the years.
From original camp quarters to an accommodation motel with the purpose to now a crisis accommodation for people at risk of homelessness. YAL Cairns consistently has the community in mind as was originally sought after.