Month: December 2016

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News & Announcements

Bringing people together at Christmas

UnitingCare West officially launched the annual Target UnitingCare Christmas Appeal in WA on Friday 18 November, in Perth’s CBD, at 100 St George’s Terrace Perth. Students from Tranby College helped create a festive environment, singing Christmas carols to those present.

One in eight Australians are currently living in poverty. Many of these people turn to UnitingCare to put food on the table, buy gifts for their children and provide temporary accommodation over Christmas. The  annual Christmas Appeal helps to support people through their hard times.

This year, Target and UnitingCare are hoping to raise $1.5 million, which will go towards running many of UnitingCare’s community services. Leave an unwrapped gift underneath the Christmas tree at  participating Target stores, and you could be helping women and children fleeing domestic violence, people seeking emergency relief or children in foster care.

At the launch, Sue Ash, CEO of UnitingCare West, explained what the Target UnitingCare Christmas Appeal means for UnitingCare West.

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Stories & Feature Articles

Stepping up to employment with GSI

Since 1958, Good Samaritan Industries (GSI) has been focused on providing employment opportunities for people living with disabilities. This year, GSI has established a new program addressing the transition from school to post school employment for young people living with disabilities.

The program is called the School Transition Employment Program – or STEP. This initiative is co-ordinated by STEP project manager, Tanya Matulich, with Danielle Congden since April of this year, having received a grant from the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS).

Under STEP, 100 work experience places were created within the various arms of GSI, a number that has quickly bloomed to 150 placements within the first year of the program’s inception.

According to the most recent report on labour force participation among people living with disabilities, produced by the Australian Bureau of Statistics in 2012, from 1993–2012 the rate of labour force participation for working age people with disabilities has remained relatively stable at just above 50%, whereas labour force participation for working age people without disabilities has increased by over 6%.

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News & Announcements

Swan View Uniting Church wins environmental award

Swan View Uniting Church was recognised for its community garden and environmental efforts on Sunday 30 October in a special service and celebration.

The church was recognised with a Five Leaf Eco-Awards Basic Certificate for their water saving native garden; solar hot water system and solar photovoltaic panels; community green waste collection, chipping and compost program; educating their church and community about gardening, compost and sustainability; and their community garden, which was established in partnership with the Swan View Community Association.

Five Leaf Eco-Awards founder Jessica Morthorpe visited Swan View Uniting Church to present the award to Neil Butcher and Rosemary Smith, who were representing the church and community garden, and to congratulate the congregation on their achievements. This presentation makes them the 9th church in Western Australia to achieve a Five Leaf Eco-Award and the 26th in Australia, with many more working towards completing the criteria.

“The Swan View Community Garden is truly impressive, and has previously been recognised with several grants and awards,” Jessica said.

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Russia with love

In the last week of September a very special event took place in Moscow. For the very first time, a hundred scholars came together in Russia to focus on the New Testament and its meaning for faith.

The largest contingent came from Russia itself, predominantly from the mighty Russian Orthodox Church. Alongside them were Orthodox scholars from a range of Eastern European countries, including Greece, Serbia, Romania, Bulgaria, Belarus, Ukraine, as well as Catholic and Protestant scholars from Finland, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Estonia, Latvia, Hungary, Germany, Switzerland, Spain, Britain, USA, and Australia.

I made the journey from afar as secretary for International Initiatives of the Society for New Testament Studies, working with its Eastern European Liaison Committee. The Society was able to win the support of Metropolitan Hilarion for the event, who generously hosted us on behalf of the Russian church.

This was a major development in the opening up of the discussion of how New Testament scholarship relates to faith. Some whose faith is nurtured and sustained by the ancient Orthodox liturgical tradition have been reluctant to look beyond it to the world of New Testament scholarship; to ask questions about history and identify diversity, as well as unity among the New Testament writings might undermine faith. We know such fear also from western fundamentalism.

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