Tweed Community Clubs has long stood beside Agape Outreach — the Tweed Heads charity serving hot meals, practical support and unconditional love to people doing it tough, from Byron Bay in the south to Runaway Bay in the north.
Agape Outreach began on the 26th of January 2009, when founding director Theresa Mitchell found she could no longer walk past people on the street. She started by cooking meals in her own kitchen and handing them out in her local area.
“I couldn’t keep walking past a homeless person and do nothing,” Theresa says. “I thought, what can I do? I can bake a meal and I can give it away. So that’s what I did. As a single mother, I made a meal, I walked down the street, I said, ‘Who’s hungry?’”
The name was no accident. “Agape, if you don’t know what it means, it’s a Greek word and it means unconditional love,” Theresa explains. “I really felt this was a fitting word for a homeless outreach helping people in the community.”
What started as a handful of home-cooked meals grew fast — “to 35 people a night, and then it multiplied the nights, and now we’re doing over 1,500 a week.” Today Agape is based on Recreation Street in Tweed Heads, powered by more than 200 volunteers — mostly retirees and university interns with a heart for people — alongside four employees.
More than a meal
The Agape Hub sees up to 150 people a day. Beyond daily meals, there are food hampers stocked with fruit, vegetables and pantry staples, mental-health support, clothing, assistance for kids in school, and help finding housing — and people only need to share their story once, rather than retelling it to organisation after organisation.
Supporting Agape is exactly what Tweed Community Clubs is about: standing behind the local people and organisations who care for our community’s most vulnerable, year after year. We’re proud to have long supported Theresa and her team — and we’ll keep standing with them.
Visit Agape Outreach to see all the facilities and services the Agape Hub provides.
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