Salvation Army Batemans Bay and Moruya launch Red Shield Initiative

Team leader for Salvation Army Batemans Bay and Moruya Lesley Archer said the needs of the community had only increased over the past 12 months, making the fundraising appeal as important as ever.

"What we do here is give people a place to belong," she said.

90 per cent of funds raised support the local work of the Salvation Army in Moruya and Batemans Bay through things such as the Community Café.

The Salvation Army started the Community Café as a place for people to gather, socialise and check in with each other. It's a place where anyone is welcome and can feel safe and accepted. It operates every Wednesday from 10am to 12pm, with a warm cup of coffee and morning tea on offer.

Volunteer Robyn Gibson saw an advertisement for the weekly café run out of the Batemans Bay Salvation Army Centre while visiting the area. She described herself as someone who normally didn't volunteer, but when she saw the brochure, she thought "that's something I want to do," she said.

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She's been volunteering at the café every Wednesday since, working behind the coffee machine and chatting to visitors to the café.

Most weeks she can look around the room and know everyone sitting at the tables, and she enjoys getting chatting with them and checking in on them.

"It's about helping people," she said.

Outside, volunteers shovel loads of soil into what will become new raised garden beds at the community garden. It's laborious work, but the volunteers are motivated by a desire to grow food for those most in need.

There are lettuces, capsicums, pumpkins and many herbs currently flourishing.

Volunteer community garden overseer Quinn Seymour said the garden had amazing potential but needed more community volunteers to thrive.

The food grown is used by volunteers to make morning tea treats for the Community Café, or is transformed into some of the around 50 frozen meals which are stored at the centre and distributed to those in need each week.

It is these services that the Red Shield Initiative makes possible.

Ms Archer said the funds supported the vital work of the Salvation Army in advocating for those who were suffering injustice in society.

"The money that comes in helps us genuinely grow to support the public," she said.

Ms Archer said she was emotional because of the overwhelming need she was seeing come through the Batemans Bay centre each day.

"If we can supply someone in need a shower, a meal, a hot cup of coffee, and then take them on to the next service to get whatever might be their need, then that's doing our part in the community," she said.

"It's all about dignity, integrity and caring."

Over the weekend of May 19 to 21, volunteers will be collecting for the fundraiser at locations around the Eurobodalla: The Village Centre Batemans Bay, Bunnings, Steampacket Hotel Nelligen, Batehaven Newsagent and Woolworths in Moruya and Batemans Bay.