Financial Inclusion Program
November 8, 2020What does it mean to achieve Financial Freedom.
Financial struggles can cause all sorts of deeper problems in our lives – and it can feel impossible to ever break free. It is crucial to help people in need to stop the cycle of growing debt and take better control of their finances.
For many people, the impact of COVID-19 has brought financial hardship. With widespread job losses and business shutdowns, it means less money in the pockets of people who are desperately trying to make ends meet.
Women have been among the groups particularly affected, as women are generally earning less, saving less, and holding insecure jobs or living close to poverty. Amongst the applications for financial support we received in 2019, 61% were women.
Our Financial Inclusion Program is helping low income earners to move away from financial hardship towards stability and more meaningful economic participation through the delivery of no and low-interest loans in partnership with Good Shepherd Microfinance.
We have identified a significant need to assist individuals in our communities to improve their financial capabilities. We hope to broaden our support through formal financial literacy education – helping people build their financial confidence to approach important areas of life with informed decisions.
As part of our Financial Inclusion Program, we will soon be introducing Financial Literacy Workshops. The purpose of this initiative is to improve financial literacy and reduce vulnerability to predatory lending in rural communities. People involved can learn the skills and knowledge they need to manage their finances more effectively and move into financial inclusion.
This pilot project will be especially important as money management struggles have been heightened during the COVID-19 pandemic, putting many people in financial crisis.
Our Financial Literacy project will be driven by what it means to achieve financial freedom.
This will include helping people learn about how to:
- Improve their financial capability
- Change financial attitudes and behaviour
- Increase financial resilience and confidence
- Improve their ability to meet financial commitments including actively saving
- Change consumer behaviour towards money and credit
- Understand their rights as consumers
With economic dignity in mind, we will help people to understand the options available to them in a safe and respectful environment. We will run financial literacy sessions in a group or one-on-one setting to provide knowledge and skills on managing money day-to-day, making informed choices, and planning for the future.
Improving skills in money management opens up lifechanging opportunities leading to enhanced financial wellbeing. This is especially important for groups of people most vulnerable to economic hardship – such as women, older people, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, and people living in rural communities.
Our hope is to free people from the distressing impacts of financial hardship.
Mary MacKillop Today’s NILS and StepUP Loans are delivered in partnership with Good Shepherd Microfinance, and is generously supported by NSW Fair Trading, NAB and the Australian Government Department of Social Services.
Kelly Vance
Direct Marketing Officer
Mary MacKillop Today
Image: Mother and two teenage daughters sitting together talking by Clare Seibel-Barnes. Purchased from Austockphoto. Used with permission.
Spring & the Seasons for Growth program
Spring brings with it more hours of daylight, warming temperatures and new beginnings in nature.
In the Seasons for Growth program we are reminded there are opportunities to learn new skills to help us adapt to the change and loss experienced. This spring, we are also reminded of the incredible response of many in support of those who have experienced the devastating bushfires of 2019/20.
Children and young people are particularly vulnerable. Exposure to disaster events effects their mental health and can impact their educational outcomes both in the short and longer-term. Evidence suggests that most children will cope effectively following a disaster given support, time and the appropriate intervention. Read More
There is an increasing demand for support to deliver training that provides a safe space for children and young people to give a voice to their experiences and learn appropriate knowledge, skills and attitudes to understand and manage the changes brought about by a natural disaster. We continue to provide opportunities over the coming months for you to train in Seasons for Growth and our funded Stormbirds programs. Further training dates will soon be available for 2021.
The experience of COVID-19 has been shared for communities across the world and as we well know, whilst a shared experience the impact will be unique to an individual, family and community. Please refer to the grief assistance page on the website for helpful factsheets – we encourage you to share these through your community networks.
We hope you find the following articles and information helpful.
Best Practice Guide
to supporting children and young people, as well as adults following a community disaster event.
The five principles are:
- Promote a sense of safety
- Promote calming
- Promote a sense of self- and collective efficacy
- Promote connectedness
- Promote hope.
These five principles of best practice are foundational concepts in the suite of Seasons for Growth programs.
Read more Keys to Resilience here
Justine Richardson
Good Grief
COVID-19: A Tumultuous Year
COVID-19: Lessons from a Tumultuous Year.
As I glanced through the headlines in today’s paper (4 November), I was really struck, not for the first time, by the treasure trove that this period will be for future historians. I’ve been riveted by the debates, the diverse views, the reflections, even some of the terrifying possibilities of these days. Since Mary Kirrane sent me Fintan O’Toole’s article in March, I’ve reflected often on his compelling reminder that it should not take COVID-19 to remind us of the fragility of our lives. And I’ve realised that it’s more than COVID that’s calling us to the truth of this fragility.
The vulnerability and precariousness of life has been intensified by the bizarre happenings in the U.S., and more immediately in our own country – by an inadequate budget, the sports and other rorts, and the legislation aimed at limiting the strength of democracy. The refusal of the Australian Government to support those most in need, such as asylum seekers (and the number of people needing help from the House of Welcome has gone from 150 to 500 in one week), the impacts of racism, the failure to deal with the climate crisis, or with housing and homelessness, aged care, education and health, have only exacerbated the already conflicted situation in which Australia finds itself. Additionally, we are now faced with a government plan to establish an anti-corruption body which is seen from the outset to be manifestly flawed. The coronavirus began with assertions that “we’re all in this together”, but it has been especially the generosity of non-Government bodies and individuals that has witnessed most clearly to the truth of this axiom.
We continue to rejoice in the ways that so many Australians have acted with big-heartedness and generosity:
- the couple who donated to the Sydney Alliance the refunds from their failed overseas holiday to pay for three asylum seekers to be trained as community leaders
- the employers who retained staff, even though they had to pay wages from their own resources
- the religious community who donated their extra Government payments to asylum seeker charities
- the restaurants who prepared meals for international students and those made homeless
- the young people who helped prepare accommodation for homeless refugees, and the businesses who released employees to donate time to paint and clean
- the parishes, students and community members who gave time to deliver food and goods to families in need
- the fruit and veggie business which was closing down and donated all its remaining stock to the House of Welcome
- the community which has taken a deliberate decision to employ asylum seekers rather than use employment agencies.
As Mary MacKillop has reminded us, we have much for which to be grateful. And much also for which we need to remain vigilant. It was widely agreed in March that our country and our world would never be the same again. This seems to have been forgotten as leaders endeavour to return to past territorial skirmishes. Nonetheless, as so many political debates slide back into ‘much of the same’, we’ve also been gifted with insightful writings and interviews urging us to keep alert to all that COVID has exposed, and encouraging us, individually and as communities, to look again at all that might be possible.
The fragility of life and the forced isolations of COVID call us again to prioritise society over the economy and remind us of the gift of going beyond our own needs, of the imperative of the gospel to see each person as sister and brother. The terrifying possibilities of political mayhem, and the temptations to corruption and soft autocratic government have tested our commitment to the strong social democracy to which Pope Francis is calling us in Fratelli Tutti. Laudato Si focussed on the interconnectedness of the whole of life. This encyclical speaks of the urgent imperative to reach out to each other in love. Francis invites us to move from ‘the dark clouds over a closed world’ to a vision of life as encounter, and to kindness as the star “shining in the midst of darkness”. Only in this way, he reminds us, will we free ourselves “from the cruelty, the anxiety, the frantic flurry of activity” that prevail in this otherwise chilling time”. Only in this way, he says, can we live hope.
Not bad goals as we review, re-evaluate, and recommit in this extraordinary COVID era.
Jan Barnett rsj
Image: Coronavirus Teenager-Cat by Orna Wachman obtained from from Pixabay. Used with permission.
Julian Tenison Woods: A Life – Chapters 21st to 23rd
November 6, 2020
Chapters 21st, 22nd and 23rd
This year [1870] the schools were not so successful and complaints were many.[i] About this time Father Woods had a sudden attack of illness. The Doctor recommended absolute quiet and rest. But it was not easy to follow this prescription.[ii]
Seeking God Wholeheartedly
November 5, 2020In an ecological reading of Psalm 63 Veronica Lawson* reflects on how all living creatures yearn for the bounty of God.
More often than not in our Sunday liturgies, a contemporary hymn replaces the responsorial psalm after the first reading with the result that we are becoming less and less familiar with a deeply significant part of our Jewish-Christian tradition. The Book of Psalms has been called a “school of prayer” or a “book of praises”. While prayer and praise are key features of this collection of 150 songs or poems, there are other genres represented such as meditations on the Law and celebrations of the Jerusalem Temple. Sadly the music is lost. Fortuitously, the lyrics have survived.
The eight verses of the responsorial psalm for the 32nd Sunday in Ordinary Time are taken from Psalm 63, which combines elements of lament and praise. The three verses not included in the selection (verses 9-11) identify the speaker as a king who praises God as his protector on the one hand and, on the other, identifies God as the agent of vengeance on those who seek to destroy him. While these verses fall outside the scope of this reflection, we can critique the inference that the suffering of evildoers is a function of God’s retribution. We might bring these verses into dialogue with other passages from the Book of Psalms that present a different attitude to suffering. In Psalm 65:3, for instance, the psalmist is overwhelmed by personal “deeds of iniquity” and is aware of God’s forgiveness…
Continue reading the article below:
Tui Motu Issue 254, November 2020 (PDF)
*Veronica Lawson RSM is an eco-feminist biblical scholar and author of The Blessing of Mercy: Bible Perspectives and Ecological Challenges, 2016.
Image Mother Dog Family by Nimit Naik from Pixabay obtained from Tui Motu.
Celebrating 140 years of Josephites in Aotearoa New Zealand
November 4, 2020Celebration of 140 Years since the arrival of the first Josephite Sisters in Aotearoa New Zealand (at Whanganui on 24 April 1880)
The Anniversary of 140 years since the arrival of the first Josephite Sisters in Whanganui, Aotearoa New Zealand was planned to be celebrated in Whanganui on Sunday 11 October 2020.
Because of uncertainty around COVID-19, the physical gathering was cancelled and instead the anniversary presentations were shared via Zoom.
You’re invited to watch two presentations for this occasions provided below:
Anne Burke’s History Presentation
Ann Gilroy’s scriptural reflection and challenge for the future
Photo: Whanganui River obtained from pxhere.
Sr Rita Joins ‘The Life’ Sisters Panel
November 3, 2020Featured in the Global Sisters Report (GSR) is a series called The Life.
Sr Rita Malavisi is part of the 2020-21 panel of 20 sisters from around the world that will contribute to the monthly The Life series. The series is in it’s fourth year.
You’re invited to read an introduction to the series and Sr Rita’s contribution provided below:
Meet the new sisters panel for the fourth year of The Life
Lessons from religious life: oppression, conflict, babies, noodle cake, flip-flops and pajamas
Footnote:
[1] Global Sisters Report – Feature Series: The Life – www.globalsistersreport.org/gsr-series/the-life/stories
[2] Photo shared with Sr. Rita Malavisi showing the sunrise from inside Melbourne Immigration Transit Accommodation, a detention center in Australia (Photo by a detainee)
All Saints and All Souls Day
November 1, 2020
Part 1: November’s feasts of All Saints and All Souls.
Lives taken and lives given: We will remember them!
Each November, we Christians remember the Saints and Souls who have gone ahead of us. It is part of our tradition, a distinguishing aspect of our communal identity. We celebrate what we cannot afford to forget and ‘play forward’ our hopes to become, as Christians, living expressions of the communion of love and connectedness in which God created us, and for which Jesus lived his life among us.