Social Justice News

The Gift Purple Day

Thank you for your support of The Gift casual clothes Purple Day last Friday 10th May.

We raised a total of $523.95.

Awesome effort everyone!

2019 Justice Matters Camp

On Monday 6th May, a small group of students from Years 10 and 11 boarded a bus with a few other schools from around the diocese and headed to Beechworth.

Day one of the camp was full on, and left many participants educated about charities, in particular, Caritas Australia, and how what we think people in a poorer country might need, isn't actually what they need at all. The main thing that stood out was that we think and refer to certain people as ‘needy’ and ‘less fortunate’ and we tend to associate them with negative words and that progresses to build a negative stigma. In most cases they don't think of themselves as ‘needy’ or ‘less fortunate’.  Minds were opened and perspectives changed and getting an insight from people who have seen firsthand the living conditions of others was a very emotive experience.

Day two of the camp began with students being eager to start their workshops. Workshops were taught by very knowledgeable and passionate people about given topics. Some of the workshops that ran were human trafficking in Australia, the environment and the cry of the earth, Indigenous Australian awareness, food imports and local produce and religious motivation, education and impacts.  To gain a real understanding of local produce and fair trade, an ‘amazing race’ was held around the town where school groups were tasked with photographing all fair trade logos and all local produce that they could find. The final activity of the day was watching a movie called Hidden Figures, which was about the struggles three African American women faced while working and contributing to NASA’s first space launch in the 1960’s. The three women made change because they stuck to their beliefs and had pride, confidence and self assurance. All these qualities are needed to be a social justice advocate or leader.

On the final day of the camp, students conducted a liturgy and thanked one another and the camp leaders for the experience. The overall learnings from the camp were:

• How people can have different beliefs and faiths and still share a common goal.
• You may feel small or like you can’t make a difference, but the power of a unified voice is a powerful thing, and when people stand together to speak out about injustice in the world they CAN make a difference.

The Justice Matters camp was a great learning immersion and I would recommend it to any students considering the experience next year.

Rhiannon Fuller, Year 11