Dr Nova Evans and her colleague Sonia Goodwin met in 2017 while at Queensland Health. Both worked as managers of services where their primary focus was to discharge people safely from the hospital system.
Wanting to find a way to positively impact their local community, Nova and Sonia resigned on the same day in March 2018 to establish a new organisation – one that provides primary healthcare street clinics to people experiencing vulnerability and homelessness.
Calling it Sunny Street, Nova and Sonia have invested $45,000 of their own money into the initiative, going many months without a regular income before the launch in July 2018.
It initially opened for a four-hour period at the Maroochy Neighbourhood Centre, caring for 48 people on that first day. Since then, Sunny Street has rolled out clinics across the Sunshine Coast, into the Brisbane CBD and on the Fraser Coast. Nova, Sonia and their growing team of volunteers are working to launch Sunny Street in Canberra soon, with other states on the cards too.