By Christine de Kock
ALONG-TIME champion for the disadvantaged, Judith Cassar, died on Monday 14 August.
Mrs Cassar was well known for her work in the community and was named Citizen of the Year by the City of Maribyrnong in 2003.
A ceremony was held to honour her last Wednesday.
Mrs Cassar initiated a number of projects to support the infirm and disadvantaged in the community, such as the Wra2000.
She ran a not-for-profit group that provided exercise programs and health and pain management courses for people with arthritis at Braybrook and Maidstone community centres.
In 1981 Mrs Cassar also established the voluntary self-help support group Women Against Poverty and Isolation.
She campaigned for the less fortunate as secretary of the Housing Commission Tenants Union and as a member of the Shelter Housing Action Group.
Mrs Cassar also worked with grass roots self-help movements and took part in the inaugural Brotherhood of St Laurence Family Centre Project in the 1970s.
Her daughter Sylvia Cassar said Mrs Cassar left “big shoes to fill”.
“She was just an inspiration,” Sylvia said.
“No matter who it was, if it was an organisation that needed a hand with something or a group, she would be there.”
Sylvia remembers her mother with fondness.
“There was always enormous love to go around although there might have been little else,” she said.
“She raised us to be strong independent children and people that we are today.”
Mrs Cassar raised six children as a single mother following the break-down of her marriage in the 1960s.
“Many people who were an extended part of our family stayed with us,” Sylvia said.
“People who had nowhere to live, she would offer them somewhere to stay the night.
“They would be people she just ran into who had no family. They would become part of our extended family.”
Ms Cassar also served on a number of committees, such as the Ministerial Advisory Council of Victoria, and was a community speaker and advisor with Arthritis Victoria.
She was also a peer educator with the Council of the Ageing.
She took part in the Doggies to Highpoint Project and the Community Building Advisory Committee, was an inaugural member of the Braybrook and Maidstone Neighbourhood Association, and was a member of Maribyrnong Council’s Older Adults Reference Group.
Mrs Cassar is believed to have died from liver failure. She was 65-years-old and leaves behind nine grand children.
