78. Hayden and Stephanie Rujak

After a trip to the United States in 2014, siblings Hayden and Stephanie were confronted by the homelessness they saw. They felt bad for all of the people they saw living on the streets, and wanted to do something about it. With the help of their parents, they created ‘Hayden’s Helping Hands’, an organisation that aims to assist people living on the streets by putting together care packages.

Hayden and Stephanie Rujak, the founders of Hayden’s Helping Hands are two primary school children who hand out food to homeless people in Melbourne’s CBD to try and help people in need and inspire generosity in the community.

To help those in need, they put together care packages and travel to the city and hand them out to anyone in need that they see. Hayden tells me that they have a spot in Enterprise Park that they frequently go to as there are usually a large number of homeless people in that area, however they do go to different parts of the city and try to hit as many spots as possible. This usually takes place every Sunday night and sometimes on Saturdays.

Hayden says that he is saddened by the fact that these people don’t really have anything. His advice for people wanting to help homeless people is ‘do what you can because every little bit helps.’ In the future, he hopes to see no more homeless people on the streets of Melbourne and aims to travel to other countries around the world to help out in as many places as he can. So far they have given out packages in Melbourne and Sydney, and Hayden will soon be travelling to the Phillipines and hopes to do some good there. In the future he wants to continue the organisation and keep helping different people as he is constantly kept motivated by seeing the way people live, and wanting to give them ‘a brighter day’.

In 2016, Hayden’s Helping Hands won the Pride of Australia award, a huge achievement that Hayden says he is ‘very proud’ of. Stephanie says she was ‘happy, excited, and proud’ to receive such a great award. School friends of both Hayden and Stephanie have expressed interest in the project and have, on a number of occasions, asked to join them in handing out the packages. They have given talks at school assemblies and their school even organised a collection to raise money for the organisation. This is a wonderful example of the community joining together to reach a common goal of helping people.

Once a month, they organise a barbecue under the bridge in the city and cook hot food for the homeless. Their goal is to make the organisation bigger and are currently in the process of taking on volunteers. Hayden says that when they were originally looking for charities to join, a lot of them had age restrictions, so they want to get as many kids involved as possible and don’t want to restrict who can be a volunteer.

If you would like to get involved with Hayden’s Helping Hands, you can register to be a volunteer at their website, or if you are unable to volunteer, they also accept donations. They also have a Facebook page that you can like and share to support these inspirational children on their journey to make the world a better place.

Words: Jennifer Walker

Photo: Sean Porter