Hosted by the Effective Living Centre Circle (Circle 111) raising funds to support refugee and asylum seeker educational aspirations.
A chance to taste and buy wines from Seven Hills Wines and enjoy nibbles.
There will also be a table selling second hand books, a silent auction for some great prizes and a raffle. All prizes will be distributed at the event.
When: 2-4pm 24 September 2023
Where: Mercedes College Staff Room, 540 Fullarton Rd, Springfield
Cost: $30 includes wine tasting and nibbles Book Tickets on Humanitix
Enquiries to Pauline Kenny on 0408 802 291 or via email
Our little Rapid Response Circle Team has been busy, especially as winter chills began to bite. Thanks to your contributions, support from other Circles, a further generous Grant from the Suzanne Elliot Trust Fund and support from the Burnside Uniting Church Cares Group for specific requests, it has been possible to respond positively and quickly to all requests for help.
Primarily these have been to help cover costs of water, gas, electricity, mobile phones, food (via FoodBank where possible) and medications. Warm clothes and bedding were in high demand, especially for refugees recently arrived from Syria, Afghanistan and Venezuela amongst other countries. Settlement Packages, while providing the basics, didn’t cover everything needed, especially for large families with 7 and 5 children. Blankets, warm quilts and sheets, towels, thermal and other warm jackets, jumpers, track pants and socks were asked for and bought new or, whenever possible, good quality, clean items were sourced from donations.
Helping people stay warm over winter
A beautifully restored bed was sourced on GiveIt for a little girl
A hardly slept on king single electric bedsourced from an Aldinga Beach resident
Car load of donated items from McLaren Vale Hair & Beauty
Carol Collin from the Willunga Circle and her friends, McLaren Vale Hair & Beauty at Sellicks, Chistian Care & Support at Aldinga Beach and down-sizing members of the Willunga Catholic Parish deserve a special mention.
Mindful of keeping heating costs down, warm floor rugs were bought cheaply on Marketplace from cash donations. Big cooking pots (new and recycled), large sandwich makers and bench ovens were other popular items with Syrian families. Additional volunteers helped make an old, cold, Housing SA Unit into a functional and cosy home for a young woman from Afghanistan, here alone while she waits for her husband to be granted a Visa.
Looking back over the past financial year reminded me how groups of ordinary people persisting with support and encouragement can achieve positive outcomes. We are glad to be be able to do this for, and with, refugees and asylum-seekers who have been deprived of liberty, life needs and hope.
Date: 22 Sept come 5:15 for supper and the drawing of the raffle before the theatre organ and movie.
Venue: Capri Cinema, Goodwood
Movie: A Haunting in Venice
Tickets: $25, Includes supper and glass of wine or soft drink
Book tickets: https://www.trybooking.com/CKVFF
Circle of Friends Australia is proud to host an online sale of a selection of Mahmoud Salameh’s graphic art. All works are signed digital prints, 42cm x 30cm, mounted on recycled board interleaved with an acid-free sheet. Cost of Art – unframed $75.00. All proceeds of sales will go to the artist to assist with further work.
Salameh’s work has appeared in the Australian press and he has years of international experience working as a professional artist in Syria and Lebanon for well-known Arabic newspapers and magazines such as Al Safir and Al Adaab. He started publishing his cartoons in Beirut, Lebanon in 1997. While in Australia he has created two award-winning animations: From Trouble to Trouble and Freedom is Mine.
In an interview with Yanis Kontos from 2015 Salameh observed: I respect cartoons and they respect me too. The brevity of the cartoon goes with the difficulties of being forced from one country to another to stay alive. Salameh is the child of Palestinian refugees and he grew up in Yamouk camp in Damascus. He arrived in Australia in 2012 and is now a citizen
The power of a great cartoon, like a poem is a distillation of great insight or emotion. It is a reminder of a deep care, a crucial cause, a social wound – an issue that you hoped would one day be addressed, one day be solved. This series of cartoons shows great insight into the struggle that asylum seekers face in trying to gain safety and freedom.
