The Catholic Weekly 5 April 2020

catholicweekly.com.au 9 5, April, 2020 Op shops for students In brief Father Farrell dies, 73 PARISH PRIEST of St John of God in Auburn Fr Ray- mond Farrell died early on 27 March at St Joseph’s Vil- lage in Auburn. He was 73 years of age. Archbishop Anthony Fisher OP led a small Mass of Christian burial for Fr Ray at the church on 2 April which was live-streamed on Facebook. A public memorial Mass will be held at a later date. Fr Ray was born inWelling- ton, NSW and entered St Columba’s College, Spring- wood in 1967 but his stud- ies were interrupted by the need to care for his parents. He resumed his studies at St Patrick’s College Manly (1991) and was ordained to thepriesthoodat St FelixDe Valois Parish, Bankstown on 13 September 1996. He served as assistant priest at Liverpool and then at St Mary’s Cathedral in 2001. He was appointed the administrator of St John of God in 2002 and then parish priest the following year, a role he served until his death. During his time as parish priest of Auburn, Fr Ray served as dean of the Auburn-Bankstown dean- ery from2003 until 2016. He was chaplain to the Catholic Women’s League since 2003 and to the arch- diocesan council of the St Vincent de Paul society since 2011. He served on the Council of Priests from 1997 until 2019. MONICA DOUMIT P13 FROM A dream and a do- nated patch of donated land, Gemma Sisia has overseen the growth of a thriving com- munity around the School of St Jude in Tanzania. The former Aussie teacher from Tamworth in country NSW opened the school gates 18 years ago with just one teacher and three students. In January it marked an- other milestone, opening an all girl’s secondary boarding school for hundreds of prom- ising yet impoverished stu- dents who would otherwise never gain a quality education Today, there are 1,800 stu- dents in total gaining a free education funded entirely by donations with 93 per cent coming fromAustralians. Better still, St Jude’s alumni will soon include engineers and lawyers and next year will see its first crop of doctors, while the school has employed former graduates who subse- quently gained qualifications in teaching, IT or finance. At the same time, it has gradually employed more lo- cal staff to the point where all the teachers, heads of depart- ments and managers are Tan- zanian. In Sydney recently during their annual fundraising drive, Ms Sisia and St Jude’s graduate Judith spoke to The Catholic Weekly about the school they love. “Nobody can tell me that Australians are not philan- thropic,” said Ms Sisia, who completed Year 11 and 12 at St Vincent’s College in Potts Point. “For most of our families their parents or guardians didn’t go to secondary school, the average home that our par- ents live in have no electricity, no glass in the windows, we’re talking about very simple, ba- sic homes. “Every school has a differ- ent mission and ours is to help bright but really poor children who would never have the UNIVERSITY STUDENTS are teaming up with the St Vin- cent De Paul Society to brain- storm ways to get young peo- ple shopping in its charity stores. They will get their plan moving after the COVID-19 crisis has passed. Students from the School of Business and School of Arts and Sciences at the Universi- ty of Notre Dame in Sydney will help the charity’s NSW Director of Retail and Logis- tics, Phil Coyte, to improve Vinnies stores’ bottom lines and ultimately help people in Gemma’s way Vincentians and Uni students hatch a plan for charity shopping means to go to a good private school. “We have a very strong em- phasis on academics.” Over 90 per cent of the adult population does not have a secondary education and there is a huge need in Tan- zania for good professionals, doctors and engineers, safari drivers, agricultural special- ists but only around 500 high schools in the whole country. “Without St Jude’s, these students might not attend school at all or if they were lucky, their schooling would have been in an under-re- sourced government school with a handful of teachers for every 1,000 pupils,” said Ms Sisia. “Without a good education, they can’t gain employment, and their families will contin- ue to lead lives of perpetual economic struggle. “Girls from a poor, rural background are the least like- ly to complete their schooling and yet, having educated girls is one of the surest ways to break the cycle of poverty. “We wanted to build a sec- ondary school for girls be- cause they don’t have a lot of opportunities and also they’re the future mums and grand- ¾ ¾ Marilyn Rodrigues ¾ ¾ Marilyn Rodrigues mothers and there’s a lot of research to show that children are more likely to be educated and more likely to thrive in other ways if their mother is educated.” St Jude alumni Judith grad- uated university last year and is teaching biology in a gov- ernment school in Tanzania. She’s the first member of her family, in Arusha in the country’s north, to go to high school and hopes to one day open her own agricultural business. “I’m really grateful for the opportunity to go and study at St Jude’s because to be honest if it wasn’t for St Jude’s I would not have finished high school,” said Judith. “The government schools are poorly-resourced and Year 10 probably would have been my last year of schooling. “At St Jude’s you have teach- ers that are very passionate and hard-working.” Judith said a highlight of her first visit to Australia was meeting her sponsors who fi- nanced her scholarship so she could attend St Jude’s. An alumni program since 2015 has provided post-school programs including coaching, mentoring and job-search training for graduates. “Our graduates are children of barrow wheelers and peas- ant farmers and their parents don’t have the skills necessary to look for the right jobs, fill out applications or network,” says alumni coordinator Mad- die Kelly. “The strongest network for our alumni will be each other.” St Jude’s board has estab- lished a future fund which it hopes will eventually en- able the school to be largely self-funding. But in the meantime Ms Si- sia said it remains heavily reli- ant on donations. For more information see schoolofstjude.org need. They include students from the business, market- ing, sociology and applied psychology courses who are enrolled in the university’s research methods classes. Students will collect and analyse real-world data to produce insights which will hopefully attract better qual- ity donations, younger shop- pers and new volunteers to Vinnie’s stores. They will also look at im- proving the ways donated items not fit for resale can be recycled. “We are excited to be part- nering with St Vincent’s for the first time this year and hope that the insights gen- erated will benefit them and their programs,” said Dr Lou- ise St Guillaume, lecturer and discipline coordinator. Drawing on students from a variety of disciplines would enable challenges to be ap- proached from several angles, she added. “We also hope that by providing students with re- al-world experience that they gain important skills for em- ployment and are confident in designing and conducting research.” Mr Coyte agreed the pro- ject will prove fruitful for both organisations. “While helping the stu- dents to build their desired skillsets and knowledge, it will also be of pivotal impor- tance to Vinnies in gaining an insight into the motivations of younger customers. “This will ensure we can continue to provide much-needed funds for our programs and services,” he said. Second year UNDA business student Claudia D’Amore said she was looking forward to helping Vinnies reach a younger market. “Op shops have a bit of a stigma for people our age, that they are full of dirty old clothes and other stuff that belongs in the bin,” said the 19-year-old. “I think that if Vinnies start to cater to new trends and new ways of reaching differ- ent audiences young people Dr Louise St Guillaume, left, Dr José Sakakibara, and Phil Coyte. would be very open to using them.” The state’s 230-plus Vin- nies stores provide funds for charitable programs and ini- tiatives run by St Vincent De Paul Society. Girls from a poor background are least likely to complete their schooling, yet educating girls is one of the surest ways to break the cycle of poverty.” Gemma Sisia Gemma with former St Jude’s student Judith, at right, who is now teaching Biology in a government school. NEWS