ReLove: Inside the organisation giving hope to domestic violence survivors

An innovative social enterprise is rehoming people in crisis, empowering them to choose everything they need to start again – from donated couches to home-sewn cushions, toasters, kettles, blankets and sheets.

Ren Fernando and Ben Stammer, the cofounders of ReLove, a charity helping people fleeing domestic violence situations. Picture: Tim Hunter

Empty. Vacant. A shell.

That’s the way survivors of domestic violence feel when they walk into a safe place for the first time, their new home, after leaving an abusive relationship.

Statistics tell us it’s taken them seven attempts to be brave enough to leave, and most have nowhere to go. It’s likely they have children. Young ones. No job – their abuser wanted her reliant on them. No friends or family – he made sure of that years ago. No money. No voice. No hope. Until now.

Until those women walk through the doors to their new life. But, like her, those four walls are empty. A vacant shell.

Until ReLove. That’s when the magic happens – just ask Jing. Two years ago, Jing fled an abusive partner and became homeless. The Women’s and Girls’ Emergency Centre at Redfern referred her to ReLove, the organisation that helps rehome people in crisis, empowering them to choose everything they need to start again – from couches to cushions, toasters, kettles, blankets and sheets – they even move them in. Help them unpack. Make their beds. Make sure they have a bed.

“I got signed into housing, but in the housing you need two weeks’ rent and your bond, so your whole pay is gone – all I had left was my clothes,” an emotional Jing says. “I was sleeping on the floor. It was empty – they may have painted a few walls or put in carpet but there is no fridge, no washing machine, no furniture – nothing. The drawers are empty. All I had was my backpack, my clothes.”

Then one day, Jing’s case worker organised a man from ReLove to come and check her house, making sure she had what she needed. That man was Ben Stammer. He and friend Renuka Fernando started ReLove in 2019 – but Ben wasn’t just sitting in an office. He was helping, just like everyone else.

“I didn’t know at the time he was a founder,” Jing smiles.

“And he did so much. You wouldn’t think that the CEO would lift your bed or your washing machine or tune your TV. I thought he was just a driver. But Ben came and said to me, ‘So, where do you sleep?’” Jing recalls.

“I said, ‘On my clothes – I don’t have any money at the moment.’

“He looked around, and he didn’t like it. And he goes, ‘Normally I don’t do this, but I’m going to get you in the van and you’re coming back to the warehouse and you could choose whatever you need for your house.’”

Not knowing how ReLove worked, Jing told Ben she had no money, but could pay in instalments. She couldn’t believe someone wanted to help her. And actually would. “As soon as I landed at the door of the warehouse, I started crying,” Jing continues.

“Then I met Ren. And she started crying. And the whole time I was doing the picking – you can pick your couch, your pillows, if you need any portraits, and the colours – and I looked at them the whole time and I thought, ‘Are you sure I can have this? Are you sure?’ I was overwhelmed and scared – and I’m like, ‘You sure? I don’t have to pay a cent?’ I didn’t know that I could ask for help.

Ren Fernando and Ben Stammer, the cofounders of ReLove, a charity helping people fleeing domestic violence situations. Picture: Tim Hunter.

“So I promised Ben – I said, I’m going to give back and I don’t care if you want me or not, I’m going to be back to help whenever I can.”

Jing does help. She volunteers in ReLove’s Alexandria warehouse, helping women through the same process that changed her life. And each time she does, she remembers how she felt in that moment. “When I look into their eyes and they start picking, I actually feel the same thing again,” she says.

“I say, ‘You can take it,’ like Ben and Ren said to me. Because I know that moment.

“And in that moment, you just want to hug and you just want to say, ‘Okay, I can do this, it’s gonna be okay.’ I mean, the shopping is from the lounge room to the bathroom, the bedroom to the kitchen, and it’s a whole life. It’s your home. I had an empty shell and I didn’t like going back there because it was empty – it was just four walls. But they gave me a home.”

Jing is speaking to Sydney Weekend atReLove’s Surry Hillspop up, ReStory, where couches and cushions and tables and chairs and artwork and furnishings – all lovingly donated – are sold to the public, with all profits going to the cause she’s so passionate about. The wares – from the likes of luxe brands Coco Republic, Living Edge, Vitra, Jardan and Jakob Wagner – breathe new life into the walls of the heritage-listed former Cleveland St church, The Kirk.

Jing’s brought homemade dumplings for Ben and Ren, who she greets with a big hug. Ben’s not just the man who helped her move into her new home and Ren isn’t just the woman who cried with her the first day they met. They’re friends.

Ren, a former architect and designer, loves what she does. The pillows she touches are all handmade, made from dead stock from the last fabric mill left in Australia. Her friend is an upholsterer and they’re using the cutoffs to make cushions for the charity. They have a pattern, buy inserts and that’s another way they can help. Then there’s her old Sydney High geography teacher Mrs Morrison, who she still stays in touch with, of course, who leads up a knitting project to make blankets for ReLove. Some 90 students have signed up to her Time to Sew. Because like Mrs Morrison, like Jing, when people hear what they’re doing, they want to help.

That’s the key to the revolution they’ve started. ReLove is a movement.

“They will crochet a square or knit a square and then she puts them together and makes blankets and they have a little sign on them saying ‘Lovingly donated by the girls of Sydney High”, Ren says proudly of Mrs Morrison’s blankets.

“I mean this is the beauty of what we do, right? We actually bring a community of people together to do stuff. And it’s hard for people to understand but this isn’t just furniture. It’s so much bigger than that.

“This is circle economy. But we say we are circle economy in action. Because we bring community together to bring good quality stuff that was heading to landfill – it can be from retailers – and this is the perfect example,” she says looking around historic Kirk. “Every single thing in here is donated, except for the cushions – that we make. Every item. Isn’t that wild?

“We needed to close the gap on what we need to fundraise to be able to operate, hence why people enjoying us is really important for us. This is our social enterprise.”

How ReLove came to be

ReLove started because mates Ben andRenwere part of a running group who wanted to give back in some way. They were meant to furnish five homes.

This year, they have a target of 1000. And all because once they saw what they saw, they couldn’t look away.

“We never really intended to do this – we were a running group, we were doing some social good projects and we had a really committed group of people who wanted to to learn and be engaged and find some practical ways of giving back,” Ben says. “One of the projects was five homes that we were trying to furnish working alongside the Women’s and Girls’ Emergency Centre at the time – and that just ballooned really quickly.

“And very quickly we were ReLove – and I don’t think we had time to stop and think about it. I mean, it was compelling.”

“Because how many times did we walk in and see people without anything – and it’s hard to look away,” Ren continues.

“And the more people that look, the more people that can’t look away. It is a movement and it’s a ripple effect. It’s almost like it’s this invisible army of people out there – people who are not just volunteering, but people are getting involved in any which way they can.”

Already this year, they’ve furnished the homes of 784 families moving into safe housing. Among the people supported, 74 per cent were women who had experienced domestic violence and homelessness, along with some 1200 children. Alarmingly, a third of the children were under the age of four.

About 36 per cent identify as Indigenous Australians. Ben says they firmly believe that breaking the cycle of poverty and violence begins with providing families the safety and stability of a secure home.

“We’re addressing the growing needs of both women over 50 and youth at risk, two demographics that find themselves disproportionably impacted,” he says.

Environmentally, it’s changing things too. Commercial sectors generate around 30,000 tonnes of furniture waste each year, with 95 per cent ending up in landfill, according to the Climate Change Department.

In the City of Sydney, over 50 per cent of household waste is bulky furniture and homewares. “Sustainability remains at the heart of what we do,” Ben continues.

“By rescuing over 1200 tonnes of furniture from landfill, we have provided essential household items to those in need and played a vital role in protecting our planet. None of this would have been possible without the dedication of over 100 volunteers a week, who help us continue this vital work.”

Nationally, over 761,000 children live below the poverty line

Nationally, over 761,000 children live below the poverty line, highlighting the importance of early intervention to mitigate long-term disadvantages. According to the Mercy Foundation, one in four women – or 2.3 million Australians – have experienced violence by an intimate partner since the age of 15.

This year alone, ReLove’s “vollies” have put in more than 5000 volunteer days to support families in crisis across some 192 suburbs in NSW. The issue is growing. It doesn’t discriminate. And it’s getting worse.

“Homelessness takes many forms – people often see people sleeping rough and think that’s homelessness … but that is really the tip of the iceberg,” Ben explains.

“We’ve worked with so many clients who came to ReLove, we’ve furnished a full home – and it’s often breaking multi-year or even decades of homelessness. And now they’ve got a job, or now they’re studying, or now they’re doing both – so this turnkey solution to the first night when you can cook and you can sleep safely, and your kids are safe, they can potentially go into the local school – is so important to help break the cycle.”

Ren says the biggest investment of money since post-war is coming into housing, which is great news, she exclaims – but more needs to be done to support the mixed use housing approach, in an equitable way.

Nationally, over 761,000 children live below the poverty line. Picture: iStock

“You’ve got to give people an equitable chance,” she says. “Because your neighbour’s got the same house as you now – except we can’t be having people sleeping on the floor, and without pots and pans to cook. It’s heartbreaking. There is an actual crisis on our doorstep – and we would never have had to grow as fast as we have if it was being done the way it needs to be done – which is really – fast, free and with choice.”

She says bringing together all the moving parts – donors from the construction industry, the hotel industry, designers, upholsterers and fabric mills – to give people a dignified experience – is key. And in some cases, its breaking decades-long homelessness.

“We get lots of pregnant women coming in, we get lots of women with babies in strollers or really young toddlers,” she says.

“Yesterday we did two moves through the Chester Hill Neighbourhood Centre, both migrant women and one mum with seven children, one mum with five children. Try and think about what that would look like – not only the logistics of moving, but then what it would take to be able to start again. And what we hear from our clients is how important it was to be asked what they wanted and what they needed.

“And we’ve all got different homes and we feel pride in our homes – I can guarantee you when you go home and look at your home, it’s all those things that mean something to you. It might have been a piece of artwork that you picked up when you went travelling or a trinket … maybe just a simple colour might mean something. So they’ll choose a yellow cushion because yellow means something to them.”

ReLove’s plans for expansion

ReLove is already exploring ways ofexpanding its services into different regions of NSW, with a long-term goal of expanding interstate and nationally.

“It’s such a scalable model – collecting great quality stuff that is otherwise destined for landfill and getting it to people who need it – with choice,” Ben says.

“We’re aiming to do 1000 homes this year across Greater Sydney and are now working with over 85 agencies across Sydney. We are looking for transport partners to help us expand via the Sydney hub to the Illawarra to Central Coast and Hunter. We’ve already done a couple of small pilots in Melbourne, in Brisbane and they were a success – and volunteer run.

“Ninety per cent of our staffing are volunteers. People sometimes turn up a day a week, sometimes turn up a day a month, sometimes turn up half a day a quarter – and that’s all part of the whole community.”

Data shows 40 per cent of Australians under 16 are exposed to family and domestic violence. However, they currently do not have a dedicated service to ensure they have somewhere to turn to escape family violence.

According to Victoria’s only 24/7 Family Violence Response Centre, Safe Steps, it often takes seven to 12 attempts for a victim to leave their abuser, underscoring the vital need for strong, accessible support services.

Melbourne survivor and Neighbours actor Farah Mak believes that one of the greatest challenges victims face is holding on to hope for a better life. Like Jing, she wants to offer hope, and show that rebuilding a safe, fulfilling life is possible. Through her horrific experience, she founded The Self-Worth Movement, a social enterprise to educate, inspire and empower women and girls, and says Safe Steps is a charity very close to her heart, because that’s who helped her in her time of need eight years ago.

“Literally to this day still I feel it in my body the way she made me feel,” she says of a Safe Steps case worker who sat next to her, a stranger, in court, and held her hand.

“I feel emotional even talking to you about it.

“It made me really passionate to give hope to others and show the power of kindness and compassion like that one woman did, and the ripple effect that she’s had on my life and the amount of lives I’ve been able to touch because of her. Domestic family violence in our country is escalating.

Melbourne survivor and Neighbours actor Farah Mak. Picture: Supplied

“It is not just a social issue – it’s actually a national crisis and a public emergency. It really demands the same urgency, funding and support that we give to any other life-threatening situation and it just doesn’t seem to be getting that. There’s tokenistic support here and there, but if there were fires or earthquakes, what would we be doing in these life-threatening situations? We would be doing a lot more.” To do that, she says a broader, national approach is needed to focus on three key areas – prevention, education and healing and recovery.

“For me, I was escaping from one state to another and moving to another town. I didn’t know what to do or where to go, so having some sort of consistent approach is important,” she says. “When you’re leaving court, for example, whatever the outcome has been, you step outside those doors and are like, ‘Where do I go? Who am I again? How do I start again?’

“And so rebuilding self-worth, I strongly believe, is the foundation of everything.”

Even the small questions are incredibly empowering

Even things like being asked to pick yourcouchor paintings or bed – colour, style, shape – like you do at ReLove, changes everything. Often that can be the first time a victim has been asked their opinion. Used their voice. It empowers them on to that critical path of healing and recovery.

“It’s little changes,” Farah continues.

“It’s little things that we can do to help empower this fresh start like that. That gives me goosebumps because we know that abuse isn’t always visible, so this coercive control, gaslighting, emotional abuse and financial entrapment is just as devastating, even more so sometimes, as physical violence and those injuries that strip away a person’s self-worth identity and autonomy. So if we can create systems or ventures like ReLove, that recognise, prevent and respond to those forms of harm and give survivors back their voice and their agency – that makes me emotional.”

Farah’s stories of abuse are so horrific they would make your skin crawl. But in the purpose of hope, she has asked we not share them. Now happily married and a mum of four, she wants women to know it can get better. They will survive too.

“I look back and just see a ghost of myself,” she says. “Just constantly living in survival mode and because I had children as well, so you’re surviving, trying to keep things all rosy and normal for your children and for yourself – but when you’re going through that leaving stage and then the early stages of recovering, healing, you’re still carrying a whole lot of shame.

Domestic violence survivor Farah Mak with Safe Steps CEO Dr Chelsea Tobin. Picture: Supplied

“Is it my fault? Blaming yourself. How did I get myself in that situation? So that’s again where you know having support with rebuilding a sense of identity and self-worth.”

She calls it a Sparkle Squad. She’s even written a children’s book. The first in her series is called ‘I am worthy’.

“I’m writing children’s picture books to help build up self-worth in girls from a young age with the hope and aim that it is never stolen from them throughout their lifetime,” she says.

“They are the reason I had the courage to leave,” she says of her children, through tears. “Because I could not normalise that life. So I had to leave in order to know I was breaking the cycle and I was teaching them that with kindness and respect. Love doesn’t look like abuse or violence, because if you stay in those environments you’re unintentionally teaching your kids that. So that was part of my driving force for leaving because I had lost my sense of self-worth.

“I didn’t even know who I was any more, but I knew I had to protect those children and break the cycle for them.”

23 women and five children have lost their lives already in 2025

So far in 2025, 23 women and five children have been killed – the deaths of 12 of those women and all five children are linked to domestic and family violence. Since June last year, 66 women and children have lost their lives to this violence across Australia.

Chelsea Tobin, CEO of Safe Steps, says no single initiative would adequately address this issue. On any day, the service manages around 300 calls, web chats, and emails to support people leaving unsafe situations. According to the Crime Statistics Agency Victoria, family incidents increased 9.5 per cent in the last 12 months, with 102,082 incidents recorded across the state.

The recent Safe Steps Candle Light Vigil

“Sadly, we know family and domestic violence continues to rise and, despite significant progress, more needs to be done,” Dr Tobin says.

“What we do know is that all victims of family and domestic violence need to be able to safely access services that provide them with support and advice, to help them leave their situation, to recover from their trauma, and to rebuild their lives. This is not just about statistics. Behind every number is a story of fear and resilience.”

To contact Safe Steps, phone [phone] or visit safesteps.org.au

If you or someone you know is experiencing domestic violence, call triple-0 in an emergency, or 1800 RESPECT, or 1800respect.org.au

To volunteer,
donate or become a client of ReLove, visit relove.org.au