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Volunteering at Bendigo Neighbourhood House for the past four years has helped give Lee-Anne Doorakkers a sense of purpose in life.
"It helps me feel useful," she said.
“I want to have lead a useful life."
Neighbourhood House runs courses and educational programs in everything from arts and crafts to computer literacy.
"If you’re a migrant you might just not have access to stuff that we would consider basic knowledge now and someone needs to think about that, to help people who don’t know things that we take for granted," she said.
“That kind of stuff does leave people isolated in today’s world, if you don’t know how to send an email to your family for example, so that’s really important.”
But for Ms Doorakkers the drop in centre is the defining feature of the centre’s mission.
“Lots of people come for things that you’d normally just knock on the neighbour’s door for,” she said.
“We don’t tend to know our neighbours in that way anymore, so I guess this is the kind of place that you can drop into because you know that the neighbours will open the door,” she said.