Vinnies gives students lessons in social justice

On Friday 22 November, some of our Year 11 students, along with many other students from schools in the Sydney Archdiocese, had the opportunity to attend a Vinnies Social Justice Day, held at the Australian Catholic University in Strathfield.

The day began with an opening prayer and an introduction into the foundation and work of St Vincent de Paul Society. We then attended various workshops to broaden our knowledge on areas that the St Vincent de Paul Society currently works in.

In our first workshop, we looked at Vinnies’ work with asylum seekers and refugees. We then had the opportunity to create Christmas cards for those on detention centre islands, who face serious issues such as lack of resources and freedom.

Following this, we learnt about the items donated to Vinnies shops, along with interesting things, such as the fact that 75% of items donated to Vinnies cannot be sold in stores or given to other people due to faults. Instead, they are used to make rags. 

We also attended a workshop looking at how Vinnies supports the mental health and wellbeing of those in the community. They walked us through the different types of mental illness and advised us on strategies to  to maintain good mental health and wellbeing.

Our final workshop involved looking at the work of Vinnies in relation to the Stations of the Cross. We took this time to pray and reflect, asking God to aid those in need. 

After all these engaging workshops, we were rewarded with a sausage sizzle, provided by St Vincent de Paul. The day concluded with a discussion from a representative from Marist College Eastwood, who spoke about the Vinnies program they run at their school. We learnt a lot from this and hopefully we will be able to apply this within our College in the future.

Overall, this day was very insightful and we would like to thank Ms Fing for accompanying us. 

Mary Alamoti, Antoniette Dagher, Cara Shivakumar, Constance Zouroudis, Xuan Hanh Do & Cristina Yazbeck

Year 11