Who We Are
Our Vision
Lighthouse Community Services envisions an empowered community, overcoming disadvantage and difficulties through compassionate and inclusive service.
Our Mission
Lighthouse Community Services’ mission is to enable hope and empowerment in local communities in Australia and overseas. We do this by:
- Offering immediate relief to acute suffering including through the provision of food and clothing and other material needs
- Providing a safe and accepting environment in our local services
- Building individuals’ capacities so as to provide a self-lead and self-sustaining future
- Attending to the needs of the whole person and ascribing dignity and worth to lives
Our Values
Lighthouse Community Services values:
Hope – looking to a better future
Empowerment – enabling individuals to lead the lives they wish to
Respect – honouring the whole person
Inclusiveness – sharing the benefits of a society with all members
Accepting – engaging with individuals, where they are
Non-discriminatory – our services are available to all, no matter race, gender, religion, sexuality or age
Justice – guided by fairness
Grace – Love – Compassion
Our Story
Lighthouse Community Services is an Australian registered charity that began in 2014 when a group of Christian people decided to work together to raise funds to assist the disadvantaged. Our aim was to provide transitional housing to domestic violence survivors and to provide food assistance to the homeless and others in need.
After being approached in 2018 by Arkwood Charity we agreed to merge their programs with ours and so the Canungra Op-shop and its team of volunteers joined us.
Since our beginning, we have also supported projects overseas which support building needed infrastructure such as schools while also supporting social enterprises to help build community sustainability.
We are a totally community-funded charity and receive no government funding for any of our projects or services. The funds raised from the goods donated to our op-shops and from your donations and bequests help support our operations and to fund our various projects.
Our Team
With the aim of ensuring as much money raised as possible goes directly to fund projects, we keep our paid staff to a minimum. We currently employ 4 staff members, who are our op shop managers. All work performed by the Lighthouse Community Services management team is done on a voluntary basis.
Lighthouse Community Services would not be able to provide its services without a vast amount of time and energy freely given by our wonderful team of volunteers.
With approximately 80 volunteers working across all our projects you can find them assisting us in a multitude of areas; helping with donation pickups, sorting and selling donations, feeding the homeless, providing food packages, administration and record-keeping, digital support, travelling overseas for projects, and most importantly supporting their local communities in times of need.
If you would like to join our volunteer team please find more information here.