Tag: International

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Social Impact

Trek for Timor raising much needed funds

Around 30 passionate people took to the Perth hills on Sunday 19 May to take part in the Trek for Timor. Walking from Kalamunda Uniting Church to Foothills St Martin’s Uniting Church in Forrestfield, the group were raising money for Lafaek Diak’s mobile health clinic.

Lafaek Diak translates in English to the Good Crocodile Foundation. It works towards providing access to quality education, healthcare and sustainable food security for people in Timor-Leste, and is one of the Uniting Church WA’s international partner organisations.

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Stories & Feature Articles

Working with our sisters and brothers in Bali

When you’re going to Bali, it’s rather cool to be able to say you are going “on work!” Especially when talking to other West Australians going there for the usual reasons.

Rev Marie Wilson and I were able to say this as we fronted up to the Jetstar flight out of Perth on a recent Saturday night. We had a job to do! Our task was to introduce some of the senior clergy of the Balinese Protestant Church (Gereja Kiristen Protestan di Bali – GKPB) to the discipline of professional supervision.

We soon discovered they knew a lot about ‘supervision’, but that what they knew was more about top-down management than professional supervision, and anyone who has experienced that kind of top-down management tends to steer clear of supervision. It’s a common misunderstanding, even among our enlightened Uniting Church ministers.

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Stories & Feature Articles

All we have in common

Doesn’t matter where you are in the world, there’s something about Swedish blondes in flares. The moment I find ABBA’s ‘Dancing Queen’ in my playlist, smiles light the faces of my four young companions and for a brief moment during the chorus, we’re in perfect sync. At the other end of the clinic, our photographer and videographer bust a few moves in between the serious business of filming the testimony of clinic manager Albert, who has limited English and dreams of a blood pressure machine for his patients. 

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Stories & Feature Articles

Papuan students building networks and partnerships in WA

Thirty-eight students and staff from the University of Ottow and Geissler (UOG), part of the Evangelical Christian Church in the Land of Papua in the Indonesian province of Papua, visited Perth from Tuesday 14 to Thursday 23 August. The trip was supported by the Black Pearl Network, a Uniting Church WA network of congregations supporting the partnership between the Uniting  Church in Australia and the Evangelical Christian Church in the land of Papua (GKI).

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Stories & Feature Articles

Kokoda mateship: an enduring tenet

At midnight on Thursday 26 July this year, seven Scotch boys and two staff flew out from Perth enroute to Papua New Guinea to embark on the world-famous Kokoda trail.

All the months of preparation were over, there was no chance to fill in the gaps, and in reality, most of us had very little understanding of the challenges that lay ahead. Seven days later, we walked through the trail’s finishing arch in the town of Kokoda. The physical and emotional challenges faced throughout the seven days of trekking had left an indelible and lifelong imprint on the  spiritual psyche of us all.

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Stories & Feature Articles

Editorial: Symbols of peace

As I write this, my 16-year-old nephew is on the trip of his lifetime (so far) on a school exchange in Japan. It was just over a year ago that my family and I were also holidaying in Japan, having an awesome time.

Japan is truly an amazing place. We went during cherry blossom season and there were trees blooming everywhere. We rode bikes through Kyoto, sang karaoke in Osaka and played video games all day in Tokyo.

We also visited the Peace Memorial in Hiroshima. It was there that I was reminded of the story of Sadako Sasaki, the 12-year-old girl who made over 1 000 origami cranes from her hospital bed. Those cranes are now recognised as an international symbol of peace.

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Social Impact

Ping Pong-a-thon to end modern slavery

There are more slaves on Earth today than at any other time in history.

‘Slave’ is a word that sounds so ancient… so distant. It evokes images of bare backed men working in fields under the watchful gaze of slave masters and women cooking and cleaning for wealthy families in far off lands.

But today, slavery is much closer to home. While the majority of slavery in our world today revolves around labour exploitation, across Asia, slavery often looks like a little girl (or boy), born in rural poverty, sent to the city at age twelve or thirteen on the premise of finding work to help her family survive. With no other options, she survives by selling the only thing she owns, her body, for the pleasure of men.

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Stories & Feature Articles

Suffering, scenery and the sacred

Yerevan, capital of Armenia and Mount Ararat on the background

For two weeks in May I had the marvellous privilege of exploring a fascinating and beautiful country, rich in history and struggle, a place almost undiscovered by tourists: Armenia.  When I told people I was off to Armenia on a self-funded trip most people looked puzzled and said, “Where exactly is Armenia?”

Armenia is in the South Caucasus region, sharing borders with Turkey, Russia, Georgia, Azerbaijan and Iran. The capitol is Yerevan, a city of over a million people, with the awesome snow peaked mountains of Mt Ararat dominating the skyline. The mountain forms an impressive background to Armenia’s ancient past.

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Social Impact

Congregations combine to combat poverty in Sri Lanka

Poverty is a serious issue, but it doesn’t mean you can’t have fun raising money to tackle it. Members from a range of Uniting Church WA congregations have recently shared in some delicious Sri Lankan curries and danced to Bollywood music as part of a combined effort to raise much needed funds for five preschools in Sri Lanka.

Susy Thomas, one of the event organisers, was particularly glad to see people enjoy themselves.

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Stories & Feature Articles

Behind the tourist dollar

Twice a day, Wayan and his son Gede head up a hill with a load of greens hacked from the surrounding area, to tempt the palates of their hungry goats, who are giving back to the family in more ways than one.

The goats will eventually be sold to provide income for medicine, school fees, cooking oil and household items. In the meantime, they’re providing (literally) heaps of manure that can be sold off to the local coffee farmer.

High in the mountains north of Denpasar, Indonesia, Wayan and his wife Puta are part of a community left behind by the tourist dollar. They’re landless small farmers, cut out of the tourist industry and literally struggling to survive. If you’ve ever visited Bali, you’ll know how important you are to the local economy. But for local people without the means to work in hospitality or its associated industries, life in Bali is increasingly difficult.

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