Justice @SJC
CARITAS AFRICA EMERGENCY APPEAL
St Joseph’s College supports Caritas Australia through its annual Project Compassion campaign during Lent. Please find it in your heart to donate additional funds to Caritas’ African Emergency Appeal.
Over 81.6 million people are facing high acute food insecurity across eastern Africa.
The region is facing multiple challenges at once: drought, flooding, rising food and fuel prices, COVID-19, locust plagues and ongoing conflict and displacement.
Approximately 7 million children under 5 years are acutely malnourished in Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia - this includes more than 1.7 million with severe acute malnutrition.
Food and fuel prices were already on the rise, but basic goods are now unaffordable for most rural families.
Displacement across the region is making the situation even harder.
- In northern Ethiopia, large camps of people who have been forced from their homes by conflict are living in poor conditions with limited access to adequate shelter, sanitation and food.
- Tens of thousands of displaced families are unable to sow crops during the current rainy season - reducing next year's harvest even more.
Caritas Australia is a member of Help Fight Famine, a coalition of community and humanitarian organisations united in our call for urgent action from the Australian Government to do our part in responding to the global hunger crisis with a $150 million hunger aid package. We must act now to avert disaster.
Caritas Australia is also supporting our partners in Ethiopia, Somalia, Kenya, Eritrea and South Sudan to bring vital aid to the vulnerable, including food distributions, clean drinking water and support for sanitation, cash transfers and seeds and household items for families impacted by displacement.
Two ways you can help:
Email your local MP
Join the Help Fight Famine campaign and call on the Australian Government to act now. Write to your local MP and ask that the government commit $150 million to help avert catastrophe in the worst-affected hunger hotspots in the Horn of Africa, Yemen, Afghanistan and Syria.
Donate to help families in need
Your donation can help provide urgent aid and assistance to vulnerable communities affected by the food crisis. Your support can provide life-saving essentials, such as food rations, clean water and emergency cash:
Thank you for taking the time to read this notice.
Click the below links for more information:
VIDEO: Africa Food Crisis - Make Hunger History
Eureka Street article: Impending catastrophe leads calls to help fight famine
Caritas website: https://www.caritas.org.au/donate/emergency-appeals/africa-food-crisis/
Allow compassion to be the lens of your heart.
Social Justice Sunday (August 28, 2022)
‘In a tradition reaching back to 1940, the Australian Catholic Bishops release major social justice statements each year in time for Social Justice Sunday. Through this tradition they contribute to the development of local Catholic Social Teaching. The statements encourage the Catholic community to reflect and act on social, economic and ecological issues. They remind us of the social dimension of the mission of the Church.’
Social Justice Sunday is celebrated in Australia on the last Sunday in August, which this year is August 28.
This year’s statement is called ‘Respect: Confronting Violence and Abuse’ and has domestic violence as its focus and how this is in “contrast to the relationships to which God calls us. Our relationships should be marked by equality and reciprocity rather than domination and violence, respect and freedom rather than coercion and control”.
In the video linked below, President of the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference, Archbishop Costelloe of the ArchDiocese of Perth, introduces the 2022-23 Social Justice Statement: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ueP-yj4BAk&t=1s
SUMMARY OF THE STATEMENT:
Respect: Confronting Violence and Abuse points out that the roots of domestic and family violence “lie in the abuse of power to control and dominate others” and that “this stands in contrast to the relationships to which God calls us”.
Our relationships should be “marked by equality and reciprocity rather than domination and violence, respect and freedom rather than coercion and control”.
We know that most often those who suffer violence and abuse in homes and families, in workplaces, and in communities, are women and children while the perpetrators are most often men. We support women in calling for respect in relationships; their lives and those of their children are sacred.
Respect: Confronting Violence and Abuse focuses in a special way on the problem of spiritual violence and abuse. It discusses how religious teachings – including our own - may be manipulated by perpetrators to excuse violence or to exert control over others.
Cultural factors in the Church and in society often also play an important role in the violence and abuse suffered in families, households, communities, and workplaces. This behaviour is sinful.
We believe that respect, dignity and justice, transformation and hope are possible.
The Statement affirms the work being done by faith communities and organisations to support those who experience domestic and family violence and abuse, and to address the drivers and enablers of violence. It points to further ways in which we can all respond to spiritual violence.
Finally, it calls for faith communities to support and believe those going through domestic and family violence and abuse, to hold perpetrators to account and work towards individual and social transformation.
If you wish to read the Statement in full, please go to https://socialjustice.catholic.org.au/. There are also links to an audio version of the statement, prayers and action cards.
Claire Hogan
Justice Education Coordinator