A member of Mums 4 Refugees in her native Sydney for years, Ms Noonan has been at the centre of the move to get a branch in the colour city, meeting with mothers’ groups online, community members and Orange City Council about what resources are around. 

“I have been chatting to a number of people … about supporting people who are seeking asylum and realised there was a bit of a gap in the services here,” she said. 

On maternity leave, Ms Noonan had been connecting with mothers and decided to do something, breaching the idea of a Mums 4 Refugees group to far more support than she expected.  

“We’ve got 42 people who’ve come forward as committed members of the group, and that’s been the beggining of it, and other people have written to me to say ‘I’m a lawyer or I bake and can sew or I can volunteer in x or y way but it’s a very grassroots thing.”

Mums 4 Refugees is, as Ms Noonan says, a grassroots movement aimed at helping refugees, particularly mothers with young children, by running donation drives and programs to help raise funds and collect needed items – “from food to baby capsules to prams to rice cookers” – for new arrivals. 

While Orange doesn’t have a large population of refugees, that hasn’t deterred Ms Noonan or her followers. 

“[Orange] doesn’t have a huge population of refugees or people seeking asylum, but there are groups like Orange Social Justice Group or Culture Hub,” she said.  

“One of my great aims is Orange becomes a place well known as somewhere that supports refugees.”

The group is yet to meet together, and will do so for the first time on Wednesday night, which will be an action-packed evening at the Orange Regional Museum as council celebrates Refugee Week. 

Mums 4 Refugees national convener Dulce Nunoz will speak, while two refugees will tell their story of how they arrived in Orange. 

Ms Noonan said she hoped plenty of people would come along on Wednesday, and more would join the group. 

She said she didn’t want the group to be politically focused, saying it wasn’t about hard politics – “although there is obviously some hard politics behind [refugees]”.

“The group is available and open to mothers on all places on the political spectrum … what we’re really about is making sure people who come here feel welcome.”

The group is for mothers only, but Ms Noonan encouraged men or women without children to get involved in support groups.

The launch is on Wednesday from 6pm at Orange Regional Museum, while a photographic exhibition at the museum will also run for this week.