All Saints Out of Uniform Day

All Saints Feast Day falls on Sunday 1 November, however we will celebrate this day on Friday 30 October. The day will be full of celebration and raising awareness and funds for our local St Vincent de Paul chapter and Catholic Missions.

For a Gold Coin donation, students are invited to come to school wearing house colours and CRAZY socks and also bring a pair of new socks for donation to St Vincent de Paul.

Sock-it-to-poverty!

In class, students will make a sock ball. The idea behind a sock ball is to play in solidarity with students who do not have a real soccer ball to play with, and so make their own from rubbish, old clothes and rope or twine.

Students will need to bring their own materials, these may include scrunchy plastic recycling, old clothes which can not be used for any other purpose, plastic (or paper bags), newspaper and twine, or string, or wool. All these items need to be found NOT purchased.

Sock ball making will take place in learning spaces on Friday 30 October, then year groups will have a kick off using their sock balls.

Why a sock ball?

It was May 2018, and a group of seven young people stood in the drive at the front of a home for women and girls in Michaelpuram, a small village in the southern state of Tamil Nadu. Three of the young people, Indian girls aged in their mid-teens, had come from various parts of the country to visit the woman they call “Mum”—Sister Clara Deveraj, a Salesian Sister who had rescued them from exploitation and raised them at the Marialaya Home in Chennai years earlier. Their four newfound friends were university students on exchange from Zambia.

As they gathered together outside the vocational training centre that Sister Clara now runs in this small hamlet, language and cultural barriers fell away as the Zambian students laughed and played with the local girls, showing them how to make a soccer ball in their traditional way, using recycled materials and twine. After testing it out with a few kicks along the dirt road, the ball was donated to visiting Catholic Mission representatives, who were there to capture the lively scene. Today, the ball survives two years later as an icon of Socktober and has travelled to Myanmar, Ghana, Cambodia and Thursday Island.

As Australians, we are accustomed to playing with synthetic, professionally made soccer balls and footballs in schools, at home, and with our local clubs. But in developing countries, where communities live in poverty, such a ball is a luxury. Because children so love the game, and its superstars, in these places, they will stop at nothing to get outside and have a kick. So, they make their own ball.

As we prepare to celebrate with a Socktober Event Day, it's important to remember the challenges faced by children all around the world. The concept of the sockball is the perfect example of material differences between Australian students and their brothers and sisters overseas.

Socktober - Sock it to Poverty with Catholic Missions

Students have been on a six-week journey that has taken them around the world, meeting new faces and visiting new places, all while having a lot of fun and learning about how, through mission, they can make a difference in their world.

How can you help? What else can we do?

In addition to learning about how we can make a difference, you may choose to help your child become an everyday hero. Follow this link to register your child and start raising much needed funds for Catholic Missions and support their work this Socktober.

October: Month of the Holy Rosary

The month of October is dedicated to the Holy Rosary. Prayer is a way to help us get in touch with God and to develop a relationship with him. In prayer we not only talk with God, but God communicates with us. As we continue to pray, our relationship with God grows, and we are transformed more into the people we are meant to be.

Students from K-10 made their own Rosary Keychains and have been using them to pray a decade of the Rosary each day. At the end of October, these keychains will be given to the students to clip onto their bags, or Chromebook cases, for when they feel the need to pause, re-center and have a quiet conversation with God by praying a decade of the Rosary.

First Holy Communion

The Sacrament of First Communion will be celebrated at a special 11am Mass on Sunday 15 November. All Catholic children who are in Year 3 or above, and have made the Sacrament of Reconciliation, are eligible.

There will be a choice of rehearsal sessions for your child to attend:

During the 10.30am Mass on Sunday 8 November, or

Monday 9 November, 3.30pm in the church.

If your child misses either the formation or rehearsal session, please contact the Parish Centre as soon as possible to make alternative arrangements.

St Philomena's School News

DIGNITY WITH COURAGE

Issue 15 · 23 Oct 2020

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