Last Friday, our CEO Julie Edwards wrote to staff acknowledging that many of us continue to face various challenges at this time. In recognition of the ongoing impacts of the pandemic, the Executive team has made a decision to grant an additional five days pro rata wellbeing leave for staff. Julie's full email, which includes details on how this leave works, can be read here.

Julie also emailed all staff with a reminder to complete the Organisational Health Index (OHI) survey. The deadline for completion of the survey is this Friday 20 August. The survey is linked here and more details on its importance can be found in Julie's email here.

Kate Brewster, General Manager of Business Support, wrote to all staff regarding an upcoming opportunity to meet individually with the internal Preceda implementation team regarding questions or challenges you may be experiencing with your payroll account. Troubleshooting sessions will be taking place this Thursday 19 August by appointment and staff are asked to email tracey.brooke@jss.org.au to set up a time that works for them. Kate's full email can be read here. 

Wear it Purple Day 2021 is happening Australia-wide next Friday 27 August and is an important opportunity for Jesuit Social Services to show LGBTIQA+ young people that we support and celebrate them being who they are. The Day has been marked annually since 2010 with the goal of increasing visibility of respect, recognition, love and inclusion for LGBTIQA+ young people in schools, community organisations, universities and workplaces. 

Why is Wear it Purple Day important?

• 75% of LGBTIQ+ youth in Australia will be bullied because of their identity.
• 80% will experience it at school. → Because of this, LGBTIQA+ youth are up to 12x more likely to experience depression and up to 5x more likely to experience anxiety.

Wear it Purple Day has been chosen by Jesuit Social Services’ Rainbow Tick Staff Advisory Group (RTSAG) to be included in the organisation’s calendar of important dates and milestones. The Rainbow Tick is a national accreditation program for organisations that are committed to safe and inclusive practice, and service delivery for LGBTIQA+ people and achieving the Tick is strongly tied to Jesuit Social Services’ vision of building a just society. You can read more about our Rainbow Tick journey here. The RTSAG is made up of staff members from around the organisation, from many different sites and teams.

We invite you to wear purple next Friday - in your internal and external meetings; while working with participants, and while out in your community. You can change your Zoom background too, as well as find more resources, here.

So we can show our support to the wider community, send a photo of yourself wearing purple to polly.elsey@jss.org.au and we'll include it in our social media posts about the day.

International Youth Day

12 August marked International Youth Day by the United Nations and in this piece, Andy Hamilton SJ calls us to focus on the impact our decisions in the present will have on the type of future we hand down to our young people in the decades to come.

International Youth Day, like all international days, reminds us of the importance of people who can slip from our minds if we are not members of their group. It reminds us that young people will inherit a world that their elders have shaped, and also that their own interests are often lost as others shape it. It reminds us, too, that the young people whom we gather together and praise or disparage as youth are not identical. Each young person, like each older person, is precious and calls for respect for who they are, and not for their wealth, nation, behaviour or achievements.

Young people are sometimes criticised for thinking only of the present and not caring about the future. Actually, many young people are anxious about the future. We have only to think of Greta Thunberg and the young people whom she has led to demand a proper response to climate change. It is the adult world, through the attention and forgetfulness of daily lives, the media and politics, that often focuses overwhelmingly on the present. We elders may think of the weather in terms of the frost we experience in July, not in terms of what is likely in the summers of twenty years time. When we think of youthful anti-social behaviour we focus on ways of punishing it immediately, not on the effects that the punishments we devise will have on the young people whom we punish. We think of the freedoms we must sacrifice today in order to overcome Covid and not of what our lives will be like in future if we do not make sacrifices. We think of the state of the world today and not of what it will be like for our grandchildren.

Fresh food relief for six lockdowns

For the past 18 months, through six lockdowns, the team at our Ecological Justice Hub in Brunswick has been creating produce boxes every week and supplying them to three emergency relief organisations in the area. This initiative started soon after COVID-19 restrictions began when the team at the Hub quickly realised that the lockdowns and physical isolation were creating food instability for many people in its community.

Every Tuesday, a small group of dedicated volunteers gather fruit, vegetables, eggs and honey - all produced in the Hub's community garden - to create these boxes. The weekly delivery of the boxes provides much-needed support to community members who are doing it tough.

We'd like to thank all of the volunteers who have made providing this ongoing support possible.

The Ecological Justice Hub regularly shares updates on their work in the garden - if you'd like to follow along, you can do so here.

The Northern Territory Government last week launched its Aboriginal Justice Agreement, which outlines proposed reforms to ultimately reduce the offending and imprisonment rates of Aboriginal Territorians. We say it must be supported by a consistent approach across the justice system to keep young people out of detention. Read our media release here.

Like what you've read?