Burnt

Over the last few months an initiative by Rural and Remote Mental Health and the Sydney Theatre Company has been touring the west in the form of a play called "Burnt".

Burnt highlights the issues of what the stress of drought may cause in the lives of rural people.

The play did not pull any punches as mental health, suicide, substance abuse and relationship issues were exposed in the play. This may seem a bit dark however I felt the play was tempered with good humor as the caricatures of rural people carried the plot well.

The quality of the performances by the the three actors, who each played multiple roles, was excellent. The play went for approximately ninety minutes and it seemed half that time.

I was fortunate to view the play at the Prince of Wales Opera House in Gulgong. This venue really lent itself to the performance as we were very close to the action and the acoustics were great.

Well done to everybody!

Kel Hodge

Canowindra Food bank

It is great to see a good idea working well in your own community!
Through the hard work and imagination of the local Uniting and Anglican Church's the Food Bank has become a reality for the Canowindra community.
The main service the food bank provides is to allow people on fixed incomes access to grocery items that would normally be beyond their budget. The goods are provided by companies and churches in Sydney to this and other food banks across the state.
There is a food bank operated by the Uniting Church in Narromine. The Narromine people see this as an important part of their Christian mission in the township.
The Canowindra people have been joined by people of the other churches in town and see this activity as an important community building project.

The Moderator of the Uniting Church Rev. Niall Reid visited last Tuesday to meet the people and see how the food bank works.

Kel Hodge

What do the youth do

Julie:
I have been doing quite a bit of work with small communities looking at some goals that they want to achieve in the next 12 to 24 months. Inevitably when we are looking at some of the things they would like to do it is the young people that they are worried about. In many places there is very little at all for the kids to do. In the last week this is come up at two separate places.


The first is Ivanhoe. This is a small community of just over 200 people 150kms from the nearest town. In the past Ivanhoe has had football teams, cricket clubs and various other activities. Now however there is no organised sport left. The nearest picture theatre or maccas is 375km away. The nearest skate park is 200km, none of which is practical on a regular basis. The town does have a swimming pool which is great in summer.

Ivanhoe also has a Youth Centre which houses some broken gym equipment and other old sporting gear. It is this centre that some of the locals and the Aboriginal Working Party and now trying to raise money for so that it can become a place kids can use. My input has been to run a Grant Writing Workshop in the town and also to provide some help with grant applications.

The other town is Goolgowi, which is 60km north west of Griffith and has a population of about 100. The town has a swimming pool and basketball courts at the school (that can’t be used outside school hours). A very enthusiastic local committee there is well underway to building a half tennis court and wall for ball practice. They also have plans to put in a bike track and incorporate some bike road safety training. My role in this process was to help get the committee together, run the goal-setting workshop and get members of the local church involved.

Both committees have a passion to make it better for their kids and it is great to work with these enthusiastic people and to represent the church in these places.

Back from Holidays

Julie:
 Back in Australia and back at work after 4 weeks working with the church in Bali. It has been an amazing 4 weeks and if you are interested you can read about some of the things I did at http://www.juliesbali.blogspot.com/

Mike Gecan

It's not often that you get the chance to meet a person who has achieved celebrity status in their field because of their achievements. This week I had the opportunity to meet Mike Gecan, a community organiser.
You may never of heard of Mike and yet in the cities of New York, Chicago, Philadelphia and Boston his name is synonymous with the citizens organisations that agitate for a fairer society in those respective cities.

Mike has had over thirty years of experience in building and equipping citizen coalitions and was sharing his knowledge with members of the Sydney Alliance. Some of the success stories from the USA encouraged people to believe that the Sydney Alliance may achieve great things for Sydney.

I was encouraged as well, because Mike spoke to me about regional alliances such as the one we are beginning to build in the Bathurst- Orange region. Regional alliances may have less resources at their disposal and yet with good will are able to function well.

It is early days for our regional alliance in Orange and Bathurst and yet all things begin with the first small steps.

Kel Hodge

Synod and Sydney and Coffee

Over the last week some five hundred representatives of the Uniting Church in NSW and the ACT gathered at Canterbury Racecourse. The meeting took four days over which a diverse range of issues and topics were discussed and decided by the members of the church.

With such a large gathering there was a lot of diversity in the backgrounds and opinions of the Synod members. I feel that generally whilst the Synod was not particularly controversial the energy was good and people appeared to come together with the expectation of making a way forward for our denomination.

The Sydney Alliance, a growing citizens movement of various civil organisations made its presence felt at the Synod as the Uniting Church is a keen participant in the Alliance.

I am pleased to say that we are walking the walk in regard to building partnerships with other denominations, religious faiths and civil organisations such as trade unions, to make our society a better place for all people.

I was kindly hosted by my colleagues the Rev Gareth Thomas-Burchell and Rev Karyn Burchell-Thomas.

Gareth and Karyn kindly sponsored me at their local coffee shop  to a baristas course where I learnt some of the art of making fine coffee.

Kel Hodge

I'm off on leave

Julie:

From tomorrow I am on a month's leave. I will be in Bali working with the Balinese National Protestant church. I will be working in the Synod offices in Denpasar teaching conversational English to the staff and helping with admin.

If you would like to see what I am up to I have started a special blog at http://www.juliesbali.blogspot.com/ and hopefully I will have regular posts. It has also been set up so you can put your email address in a get the posts emailed whenever I write one.

I'll be back at work on the 17th May and will be in touch soon after that.