LOCAL LIFE
BLACKTOWN ’ S FINEST ...
Westmead Children ’ s Hospital received $ 13,300 raised by the charity that Elias is president of . by Lorna Gordon
It ’ s not often that you hear of someone raising money for local charities for nearly 50 years , but Elias Nassif has been doing exactly that .
When he first came to Australia in the early 1970s Elias ’ brother and sister were already here and they encouraged him to join them . His plan in Lebanon had been to go to dental school and he had a place at university . He assumed it would be straight forward to apply to an Australian university and study here , but things weren ’ t as clear as he had hoped .
English was not his second language ( it was French ) so on arrival to Australia he had to learn it and become fluent enough to apply for university . Sadly , by the time he was fluent in English , he couldn ’ t get a place at his chosen school , even though he tried everything to get in .
While this was a source of frustration for Elias , he had to earn a living , so he started to work for his brother in law and eventually set up a tobacconist shop in Quakers Hill , even though he told me he had never smoked .
“ I had a bad back and needed something I could do that didn ’ t involve heavy lifting . My son runs the shop now , but I still come in every day to help out and keep myself busy .”
Elias ’ father and a small group of ex-pat Lebanese men got together back in 1975 to start up a charity organisation , the Kfarsaroun Charity Association , named after their home town , to help raise fund for their village in Lebanon and local charities here in Australia . At the start it was his father who was the more involved of the two , but it didn ’ t take long for Elias to throw his hat in and do his part to help out families in need .
To begin with , the charity focused on raising funds to help their village back home . The civil war in Lebanon meant there was very little in the way of basic services for their old community , so they took it upon themselves to change that . The first thing they did was to make sure that people had access to health care , a vital resource that their community was missing .
“ We established a medical centre in our village , another charity had bought the land so we raised money to help build the centre and purchase medication and equipment . We
6 ISSUE 33 // DECEMBER 2023 MERRY CHRISTMAS & HAPPY HOLIDAYS ! theindependentmagazine . com . au BLACKTOWN CITY INDEPENDENT