Hello, and welcome to another edition of Just News. In this edition, we're sharing stories of hardship and hope for families arriving in Australia from Afghanistan, looking towards the end of the year with our December All Staff Day and 2021 Annual Report, and celebrating an advocacy win that will allow charities like Jesuit Social Services to focus on our core work of supporting people experiencing disadvantage.

Our next All Staff Day will take place online tomorrow, 15 December at 2:00pm AEDT. We'll hear updates from our programs across the country, reflect on the year, acknowledge the efforts of our staff and volunteers, and spend some valuable time together. More information and your invitation to the meeting is here.

And this week, we're pleased to share with you Jesuit Social Services' 2021 Annual Report. Annual reports are a way of reporting on our work for the year, celebrating our efforts, and demonstrating our accountability and transparency. Read the full report here.

A warm welcome for Afghan families

Afghan families entering hotel quarantine in Melbourne in August and September were met with hot meals, culturally appropriate groceries, and a warm Jesuit Social Services welcome, thanks to the quick efforts of our staff member, Nasser Yawari.

Nasser is a Hazara man who arrived in Australia from Afghanistan in 2012. He works on our Jobs Victoria Advocates program in Melbourne, supporting people looking for work. As Afghan families arrived in Melbourne following the fall of Kabul, Nasser worked quickly with our Ecological Justice Hub, AMES and The Big Umbrella to coordinate, package and deliver groceries and hot meals to 30 families in three different quarantine hotels — sending 240 food packages (pictured above) per week.

"Once I heard they had arrived in Melbourne – the thing is, everything that is new for them, I’ve experienced it myself. When I arrived, I couldn’t speak English fluently. The culture, environment; everything is different. Once I heard about the newly arrived families I knew they didn’t know about employment, the education system, the environment. They approached me – they needed urgent help."

We spoke to Nasser for a website Q+A, where he speaks more about his background, coordinating the food relief response, and the support he received from Bianca, Stu and the Jobs Victoria Advocates team.

Action to reunite Afghan families

Nearly 600 Catholic leaders have written to the federal government calling for a more just and compassionate welcome to families from Afghanistan, including those supported by Nasser and his community.

The Catholic Alliance for People Seeking Asylum - CAPSA campaign, which Jesuit Social Services co-convenes with Jesuit Refugee Services Australia, has published an open letter calling on the government to: 

• Provide permanent protection to refugees on temporary visas in Australia.
• Expedite family reunion pathways for families of people from Afghanistan in Australia.
• Commit to an additional intake of 20,000 resettlement places for people from Afghanistan.

The letter was signed by nearly 600 Catholic leaders. The text of the letter is available to read on our website.

Advocacy update

In Just News 124 we mentioned Jesuit Social Services had recently signed onto five open letters to governments and decision-makers, calling for change on issues including criminal justice, charity funding, and welcoming refugees. This advocacy forms part of our influencing work, and is a key pillar in our efforts toward a more just society. We're pleased to update you on progress made since the last Just News.

In good news, the federal government's charity regulation bill was defeated in the Senate last week, after efforts from the Hands Off Our Charities campaign, which Jesuit Social Services supports. This victory means charities are free to focus on our core work of helping people experiencing disadvantage and hardship to build better lives.

And the Raise the Age campaign's letter calling on attorneys-general to raise the age of criminal responsibility from 10 to 14 years has been published. Jesuit Social Services has supported this campaign for years — calling for a just, compassionate and rehabilitative response to children in trouble — and is proud to have signed this open letter.

In Just News 122 we introduced a new, monthly section: an update from our Business Support Services team, which looks after the back-end processes that are essential to Jesuit Social Services' operations. In this edition, we have an important update about leave, cyber security training, and using Gemba. And if you're looking for particular information from this team, you can find the Business Support Services Guide on Gemba. 

Cyber security training modules

Have you completed your modules? Please do! This training is a compulsory and important component of our approach to cyber safety. There are eight short (approximately four-minute-long) videos in total. The modules expire, so please complete the earlier videos first, before they disappear.

Quality, Risk, Compliance and Policy (QRPC) Committee

The last QRCP Committee for the year is this Thursday, 16 December. If you have any documents that need updating, or new documents you've created, please send them to kerry.durrand@jss.org.au. 

Gemba tutorial, updates, and recent additions

A short, eight-minute video on how to navigate Gemba can be found here (if you have trouble logging on or finding that video, please email gemba@jss.org.au). The video can be downloaded and sent to new or staff members if needed, and also might be a good refresher for those of us who have been here for a while. 

Though we hope you never need to use them, we've developed instructions for what happens if you lose a work phone. It’s important we're notified about lost phones promptly, to ensure sensitive data (eg about participants) isn’t accessible to whoever finds the phone. The instructions can be found on Gemba in the ‘ICT Instructions’ folder within the ‘Systems Instructions (How To..)’ folder. New instructions for setting up Zoom meeting are also located in that folder.

Finally, we need to keep track of which forms are being updated by who, so multiple people don't update the same document at the same time. If you do want to update anything on Gemba, please contact Kerry or Alex.

Using Preceda

If you have any questions about how to use Preceda, please see the instructions on Gemba. There are separate instructions for employees and managers — to find these, search 'Preceda' in Gemba. Any further questions about Preceda should be directed to Payroll, not Human Resources — email payroll@jss.org.au.

Wellbeing and goodwill leave

It’s so great that we can go somewhere when taking our leave! Please remember when applying for Wellbeing and Goodwill Leave to select this as both the Leave Type and the Leave Reason. Scroll to the bottom of the list for Wellbeing….. and enjoy your leave, once it has been approved.

Media coverage for our Dropping off the Edge 2021 report continues to come in, particularly with local newspapers. Read about the challenges faced by communities in the Murray Valley and Maryborough — and learn how resilient local services are responding.

And if you missed it in Just News 124, ABC News covered the Dropping off the Edge 2021 launch on TV, radio and online, speaking with Chandelle Wilson, who works as a supervisor at our Willmot Community Kitchen and has lived in Western Sydney for 20 years. Chandelle's words are well worth a read or a listen. 

"While the results of the 2021 Dropping Off the Edge report are disappointing, they also reflect the complexity of challenges faced by parts of our Mid Murray community and many other regional and metro communities... Council recognised there were some challenges facing residents, particularly the region's most vulnerable."

— Dave Burgess, Mid Murray Council Mayor, Murray Valley Standard

If you've got an update or story to tell, or want to share your feedback, we're happy to hear from you. Use the buttons below to share your thoughts.