Asylum Seeker Resource Centre
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| Formation | 2001 |
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| Founder | Kon Karapanagiotidis |
| Headquarters | 214-218 Nicholson Street, Footscray |
The Asylum Seeker Resource Centre (ASRC) is an asylum seeker support organisation in Australia. The ASRC, based in West Melbourne, provides aid, justice and empowerment programs to over 1000 asylum seekers living in the community seeking refugee protection.
The ASRC is run by a team of volunteer and paid staff. Soon after the centre was opened in 2001, the attention brought to asylum seekers issues by the Tampa affair in August of that year – when the Australian Government, under Prime Minister John Howard, refused to grant the Norwegian freighter MV Tampa, which had rescued 438 Afghan asylum seekers, permission to enter Australian waters – led to a greater interest in the centre and more volunteers signing up.
The mission of the ASRC is to ensure that 'all those seeking asylum in Australia have their human rights upheld and that those seeking asylum in our community receive the support and opportunities they need to live independently.’ Their core values are to ‘assist all asylum seekers regardless of race, religion, gender, health or sexuality’. The ASRC says it does not means or merit test for access to its services. Rather, they ‘advocate for asylum seekers without fear or favour’, working both at the personal and legislative level. They are focused on both empowering asylum seekers towards self-determination, as well as educating the community about asylum seekers.
The founder and current CEO of the ASRC, Kon Karapanagiotidis, is known for his provocative ways of bringing attention to asylum seeker issues, performing at the 2011 Melbourne International Comedy Festival, as well as elsewhere, as the Hateful Humanitarian.
The ASRC was founded in 2001 by Kon Karapanagiotidis, a lawyer, who was at the time a lecturer in welfare studies at the Victoria University of Technology (now Victoria University). At the time there were many asylum seekers living in the community on the Bridging Visa E (BVE), a visa generally given to those ‘unlawfully’ in the community who have to depart before the visa expires, though many are still appealing their case for asylum. Those on a BVE are denied access to Medicare or Centrelink and do not have the right to work. Karapanagiotidis and his welfare students raised funds to create a small food bank for asylum seekers, opening on 8 June 2001. A non-profit enterprise, Grasslands Grocery and Information Cafe, provided the ASRC with two rooms free of rent above a disused shop in Footscray, Melbourne.
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