COMMUNITY ARTS PROJECT – PRESTON

On Saturday (8 November) The Preston Corps, in Partnership with Crossroads and the City of Darebin, launched our latest community integration and support program. This Art Project will continue over 8 weeks as up to 15 people, new immigrants and their mentors, join together to learn how to create a sculptural masterpiece.

Under the direction of internationally acclaimed artist Conrad Clark (www.conradclark.com.au) the participants are encouraged to design or adopt a bold and striking image that symbolises their life journey. After sketching this design each participant will learn how to carve the image from Hebel brick. At the end of the program we will exhibit the masterpieces in the foyer of The Salvation Army in Preston.

This mission initiative of The Salvation Army’s Northern Mentoring Support Program (Jeremiah Temple) is another opportunity for new Australians and their mentors to build relationships and to be introduced to the Corps in a non-threatening and empowering environment.

S4SI

The afternoon started out quiet - but that soon changed as the van I drove quickly filled up with African boys excited about playing their first game of indoor soccer for Preston Salvos United.

Soccer for Social Inclusion (S4SI) is a new initiative of Darebin African Resource Centre (DARC), and we (Preston Corps) have just become the proud sponsors of two of the eight teams in the competition.

Arriving nervous but excited the boys soon summed up their opposition and decided that they had faith - faith that they were about to loose. But as the coach handed out their new strip, a red or yellow shirt with a Red Shield, shorts, shin guards and socks the boys smiles revealed an amazing transformation into confident, proud young people.

The party atmosphere at the venue reached fever pitch as a DJ materialised from nowhere and setup very loud African music, young people danced and sang in between cheering on the competing teams. And as the air in the waiting area became thick with the smells of spray on deodorant and perfume, young boys and girls strutted their stuff - confident, proud and completely accepting of each other.

As each of our teams took to the 'field' the soccer skills (surprisingly) matched the shiny new outfits and Preston Salvos United Juniors and Seniors literally danced away from the venue with a very convincing win each.

And Now The Time Has Come

To all that have been following this blog because it has told you about The Salvation Army's and work and my time away in Taiwan and the Philippines, a warning: this will be the last blog from Manila, and most probably about relief work as a result of typhoons.

After almost 7 weeks and 5 typhoons, I am on my way home tomorrow, but before I go let me give you a synopsis of what The Salvation Army - Philippines has done and will do. The good news for us is that all the supplies are in for the next round of relief distribution, so by the end of November Salvos will have distributed 49,562 relief packages containing food, bedding, medicines and toiletries. They will have supplied 4,000 (family) kitchen kits and provided equipment for 5 mobile kitchens (based at divisions) for future disaster relief efforts (which include portable power generators), not too mention the many hours of voluntary work given to rescue and cleaning efforts in numerous communities throughout Luzon.

But in the next 8 weeks there are forcast to be another 4 typhoons: so whilst the work carried out by a relatively small INGO has been awesome, there are still some anxious times to come. My last request of you would be, don't move on (in your thinking, your support and your prayers) from the Philippines too soon - they would still appreciate your support.

The Aftermath of Santi

Typhoon Santi, was 'a well behaved Typhoon' - or so says the weather bureau. It was labelled as such because it followed the predicted path and pretty much acted as forecast. Just a pity that along its way Santi caused more flooding in areas that were already under water, took out at least one major bridge and cut off numerous roads, destroyed a number of houses, injured a few hundred people, caused the evacuation of thousands of others and killed at least 12. (But at least Santi was well behaved!)Already under water and battling rising morbidity rates as a result of water borne disease the last thing these communities needed was more rain - more misery and more uncertainty.

You may recall I visited Santa Cruz last week, (blog below) and this morning I received this comment:

rizza said...I'm from the town you've visited (Santa Cruz, Laguna). It's just so sad that when we are just starting to recover from typhoon Ondoy, typhoon Santi ravaged our town again and rendered most of the town inaccessible because of still high flood waters. I'm just sad that most of the people in our town will not be able to celebrate Christmas in our homes.

What do you say to people like Rizza? You deliver a food parcel and that will help their stomachs for a while. You give them medicines and that may stop them getting sick. You give them a bed mat and a blanket, but where do they lay it out and sleep - on the roof? You write about their plight, try and explain the hurt and confusion, but what help is that when they watch their belongings float by in the dirty smelly water.

Sometimes what we do seems so futile. And yet we do it - and we will conintue to do it because there is little else we can do. We do it because we can't do nothing. We do it because we must do something.