Finishing well

Probably right now the idea of ‘finishing well’ is at the foremost of my mind. As a person who feels strongly about integrity, I definately feel it is important for me to finish strongly, not to finish well before I leave the various roles I am in down south.

However, it has to be said that I am finding this difficult. My mind has moved on. I am constantly finding myself thinking more about my 5 month holiday(naturally) and my plans upon return than on the last 3 weeks I have at school and also in Margaret River. Finding the drive to complete what I am involved in down here well is proving difficult. I think this is partly because I really enjoy NEW challenges in amongst ongoing challenges, but with such a short time remaining there is no real ability for me to start or face new challenges…so completing the ongoing ones is proving more difficult.

I have just come back from school holidays and to say yesterday and today have been difficult would be an understatement. I was clearly reminded yesterday just how much there is left to finish. I felt tired just perusing my ‘to do list’. Very little of what is remaining is exciting, it is mostly collating data, working out handover material, cleaning spaces etc. None of this excites me.

I suppose one of the lessons I am being reminded of is that I can’t always rely on having enthusiasm towards something so as to do it. Sometimes we do have to do things that are NOT in our field of interest. In fact you could say it is how we treat THESE area’s that says a lot about our character and integrity.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mean to include things we get involved in that are actually unimportant, I mean area’s that are important to our role but may not infact be entirely in our area of interest. As an example, last year I undertook a whole school survey which the various chaplains have been doing here for 6 years now. The information from these has been very, very beneficial…but the actual collating of the data is extremely tedious and boring. It would be very easy for me to just leave this for the next chaplain, but I know how I would have felt if, when i started here, I discovered I had to collate the data from a survey the previous chaplain did. I am not excited about doing this, but it is important to complete this, finish well, and enable whoever takes my position to have a clean, fresh start.

Finishing something is defintely an interesting experience.

Back into the swing

Well school is back…so hopefully I will be able to update my blog more often!

Day 1 was tops. In fact, I would safely say it was the best day I have had. The kids were so excited to be back and enthusiastic about school. A few shed a tear, but most cheered up pretty quickly. I managed to get around to all the classes, remind everyone what I do and share on the virtues of courtesy and respect, our schools Term 1 virtues.

Feeling good about the year ahead!

Being Chris Judd

Being the avid footy fan that I am, I often think about things in footy terms, and I can’t help but think that right now i feel a lot like Chris Judd probably did for much of the year 2007.

At the end of 2007, Judd moved to Carlton, sighting a deep desire to move home. However at the same time he said something along the lines of ‘if West Coast was a Melbourne based club, I’d sign a long term contract’. Chris didn’t leave because he disliked West Coast, he just wanted to be in Melbourne.

So how does this relate to me? Well right now (and for most of the year) I have been torn between working at Dunsborough PS but also longing to work closer to Margs. During my recent job application, I became increasingly excited at the prospect of working IN Margaret River (and even more so about working FOR Margaret River). Now, even though I didn’t get that job, my heart still beats to be more involved in the day to day life of Margs and that is difficult, spending 4 days in Dunsborough.

Having said that, I do really enjoy Dunsborough. Along the lines of Judd, if Duns PS was in Margs, I’d prob ‘sign a long term contract’ too. As the year starts to draw to a close, I am increasingly aware of the impact I have been able to make on staff, students and parents, and feel like only NOW could i truly begin to be a ‘chaplain’ at the school, with students now trusting me more given the time they have had to get to know me. It tugs at my heart to even think about abandoning them next year. We had a school planning session yesterday, my first, and it opened my eyes to so many area’s that I ‘could’ get involved in, very strategic and beneficial area’s, but ONLY from a long term (not a 1 term) perspective.

Now I could argue for starting them…then handing them over to any future chaplain who arrives. However, the most difficult things that I have been involved in this year have been things either started, or handed over to, the previous Chaplain. This isn’t to say they did a bad job, in fact they were running very smoothly, but they were all part of his approach to the role, and I (like all chaplains) am quite different. As such, I feel it would be unfair to expect a future chaplain to ‘run with’ things I start up.

What has made my decision (which I still haven’t made concretely) harder, has been what I HAD felt was a lack of guidance from God, but am now quite sure is a deliberate allowance for ‘me’ to decide. I feel God is saying to me ‘my role for you is to be in Margs (or the south-west, or both)…how that looks I want you to decide’. I feel ‘either’ decision (to stay or not at Duns) is ok. But I just wish God would say either way!

So here I am, stuck between a rock and a hard place. If I leave Duns, what I would do in Margs I am unsure, but I do trust if that is my choice then God will honour it and help me. My prayer also is that if i decide to stay on, God will finally give me peace of mind that I have not had ALL YEAR. I don’t want to stay on if I am only going to spend all of 2009 ‘wondering’ if this is right. It not fair on Duns or me.

So that is basically where I am at now (and have been for AGES). Sorry for the lack of updates recently, holidays often means less net access. Now I’m back and can hopefully keep you more in the loop once more!

Child Labour

The Issue

Where do our soccer balls come from?

As part of my job I get the chance to go into classrooms and make children aware of some of the things that are going on around our world. One such topic that I have been focussing on lately is the issue of child labour. The general response from kids has been ‘how can this happen?’ It is really hard for the children to comprehend HOW children their age can be forced to work for 10-12 hours a day (or more), for very little pay, instead of going to school. They are universally outraged. 

Some Stats and definitions (from World Visions ‘Get Connected’ magazine.)
“Child labour is any work done by a child that is dangerous, keeps them from getting an education, or is harmful to their health or development.”
The International Labour Organisation estimates 218 million children in the world today are involved in child labour. That is one in every six children in the world.
The most common industries employing child labourers are farms, mines, factories (in particular textile and sports equipment), homes and shops.
The greatest number of child labourers is found in Asia, with 122 million children involved right on Australia’s doorstep!
Child soldiers also fall under the ‘child labour’ category.
Every year 22,000 children around the world die in work-related accidents.

A Christian Response?
The question I have been asking myself is, what is a Christian response to Child Labour? When talking about justice, mercy and peace, what role can we take in helping eradicate child labour? Most child labour occurs in countries living in extreme poverty, so obviously the work people are doing in fixing this is making a big difference, but a key area that we can all make a difference in is our shopping habits. Now, this is a ‘touchy’ area, so I’m not about to state ‘this is what we must do’, because it wouldn’t achieve anything and wouldn’t be the right thing to do. What I do want to talk a bit about though is the topic ofFair Trade.

What is Fair Trade and how does it help?
According to the Fair Trade Association of Aus and NZ,

“Fair Trade is a trading partnership, based on dialogue, transperancy and respect, that seeks greater equity in international trade. It contributes to sustainable development by offering better trading conditions to, and securing the rights of, marginalised producers and workers – especially in the South. Fair Trade organisations (backed by consumers) are engaged actively in supporting producers, awareness raising and in campaigning for changes in the rules and practice of conventional, international trade.”

Fair trade helps by spreading the money earnt by selling an item evenly across all people involved. Take a soccer ball for example. When you purchase a soccer ball, the money you pay gets spready across an importor, factory, contractor, maker(usually a child), exporter and a retailer. That’s a lot of steps! Fair trade ensures that each person along that chain gets ‘fair’ compensation for their work.

Clothes are another major item we use in the western world where the maker (once again often children) receives as little as 1% (or less) of the final price paid.

Recently a friend of mine returned from a trip overseas, boasting to me how they were able to purchase 4 Soccer jumpers for $10! They look exactly like the ones you buy in Australia for $80. Rather than be impressed, I was sad, because there is only one way somebody could sell a shirt for $2.50 and still make a profit.

I will close this post here, with more to say at a later date. But I will leave it with a question. What are you wearing? Are you wearing the sweat and tears of a child (and before you ask, sadly I have to say I probably am, given 90% of what I am wearing I bought from Target). What role do you think Christians should play in advocating for Fair Trade?

Year 6-7 Camp

 I’m back! But only just…spending a week with 62 alien life forms was definately interesting!

The camp was fantastic, but very, very tiring. A ‘memorable’ moment, some would say for the wrong reasons, was the trip to Kalgoorlie. Memorable mostly because it was so LONG! We departed school at 9am on the Monday, arriving at the camp school between 11.30 and 12 that night! This was NOT the plan, but due to significant delays on the prospector, the train ride took 9 hours instead of 6. The most significant delay saw us spend 1 hour on the train at Koolyanobbing(pictured) due to frieght trains. 62 eleven and twelve year olds on a 15 hour journey…fun!

Though the trip was tough, it was still fun. However, the first ‘day’ per see was not over. We finally got settled in to the camp school and all the children in bed by about 12.30-1am…only for Kal to have a power shortage sending the school alarms into all kinds of disarray! So the teachers and I madly ran around trying to work out why the sky was falling in, eventually calling the camp principal who had to come into the school at 2am to stop the alarm. This was also much fun!

Finally, by about 2.30am the kids were asleep, or at least mostly quiet, and the teachers got to bed…only to get up 4 hours later.

The rest of the week was go, go, go and we never did ‘catch up’, but it was such a fantastic week and we watched, the kids mature before our very eyes. For most of them this was by far the longest time they had spent away from their parents, and it caused them to ‘mature’ in many ways, which was both positive and negative at times!

Overall I had a blast, and this camp definately helped me in my role as school chaplain!