Winter message from the CEO
Since the last edition of our About newsletter, Baptcare has implemented another two programs designed to help those who ‘fall between the gaps’ in our society. Both of these programs receive no government funding. We have commenced these works because we are convinced they will address important, un-met needs and it is our hope that we will secure the necessary support to continue them into the long term.
The first of these is the expansion of the Home-Start program into the Loddon-Mallee region. Home-Start is a program designed to support families with young children by linking them with volunteers who provide informal and friendly encouragement, support and mentoring. Baptcare has successfully operated the Home-Start program in northern and western metropolitan Melbourne for eight years.
The second of these new programs is the Sanctuary asylum seeker project operated in partnership with the Brunswick Baptist Church and the Hotham Mission Asylum Seeker Project. This initiative will provide safe and secure transitional housing for twenty male asylum seekers on ‘Bridging E’ Visas, many of whom have sought protection in Australia, having fled torture and persecution in their country of origin. These men have no right to work, no access to Medicare benefits and are not entitled to any Centerlink income support. Recent world events have again reminded us again of how it is that men such as these come to suffer at the hands of others.
The suffering of untold thousands in Burma (now known as Myanmar) is one such example. Having endured the horrors of the cyclone – a natural disaster – their suffering continues at the hands of a manmade disaster; that is, the appalling neglect and contempt of the military junta that refused for so long to allow aid to flow into the country. The Burmese generals see the need to care for their population as secondary to protecting the interests of those in the military clique. The attacks in Soweto on refugees who fled the chaos in Zimbabwe and in other parts of Africa is another profoundly disturbing example of humanity’s capacity for brutality.
These events directly link to our deep-seated survival mentality and it feeds something at the heart of our insecure humanity. They are derived from that basic, dominant, intrinsic fear of those who are different from us, a predisposition to be on guard against them, to reject them, to attack and even to kill them. This can be called ‘tribalism’. It is a way of expressing common belonging.
Benign expressions of it can be seen in our support of AFL teams. But, it often is expressed in more sinister ways, for example, the way we portray as enemies those who are different from us. In the Parable of the Good Samaritan, Jesus invites us to enter into the experience of a new humanity – a humanity expressed beyond tribal limits, self-interest and the self-serving quest for survival.
Baptcare’s Sanctuary project seeks to express these gospel values and to ‘bring care to life’ to those living at the margins. It is my hope you are excited by this development too, and that you can find a way to support this vital work.
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