Refugee Week 2022 and the Year 11 House of Welcome Food Drive

Each year Australians celebrate the contributions that refugees and migrants who arrive to our shores make to our society. Furthermore, we come together each year to focus on the ways in which we, as an Australian community, can better respond to the needs and challenges that refugees and migrants face in leaving their homelands and arriving in an unfamiliar place.

Refugee Week 2022

It is only through storytelling and engaging in dialogue that we can better understand what refugees and asylum seekers have faced. It is only through listening that we can be moved to reflect on how we might be called to create a more just and compassionate society. This year the theme for Refugee Week is healing. What a poignant theme it is! We cannot move forward and create a more loving society if we don’t respond to the places where there is hurt, division, pain, and suffering. This is the core message of Christianity. We have an incarnate God who came into this world and experienced the brokenness of the world so that we might learn how to do things better!

In the Gospels we read that Jesus suffered many times, too. One such story is that upon hearing of the horrific death of Johan the Baptist, Jesus withdrew from the people to find some solitude. The crowds of people though followed Jesus and he felt compassion for them, even during his own suffering. It is then that we read about the feeding of the 4 or 5 thousand people with only a small amount of food. What was provided by Jesus was of course nourishment in the form of the loaves of bread and fishes. And still, more importantly, a nourishment of their spirits, an acknowledgment of their brokenness and longing to be close to Jesus whom they knew provided more than just what we need physically to survive, for “they all ate, and they were satisfied”. We hear of large crowds, of strangers, of people in need coming to Jesus and his response was one of active love and compassion.

As a SCEGGS community, we once again are asking you to donate to the Year 11 Charity Food Drive during Refugee Week, Week 9 Term 2. The non-perishable food items will be delivered to The House of Welcome in Granville that is a drop-in refuge for recently arrived refugees and asylum seekers. We know that the food donations are one small way we can extended loving compassion to the many who through some of the most devastating humanitarian crisis and acts of war have had to flee their homelands to find safety here, to find some sanctuary and respite and to begin some of the process of healing.

Thank you in advance for your generous support of this initiative. Secondary students can drop food items in the baskets outside the Chapel. Primary students can give their donations to their class teachers.

Please note: We pay particular heed to the wishes, habits and palates of those receiving our donated goods and respectfully request that you do not supply soup, baked beans or tinned spaghetti.

Dynielle Whitney
Head of Religious Education