Hello, and welcome to another edition of Just News. In this edition, we're commemorating Sorry Day and Reconciliation Week, hearing an update from our settlement programs, and chatting with volunteer Anne-Marie Quinn, whose interview skills workshops have helped nearly 100 professionals from migrant backgrounds prepare for the new reality of seeking work in Australia. Stay safe, stay warm, and enjoy the edition.

New documents have arrived in Gemba! Find Kerry Durrand's email from Wednesday 1 June to see our newly approved working from home policy, updated guidance on cashing out annual leave, comprehensively updated organisational chart, and more.

Also happening last Wednesday was our now-regular monthly morning reflection – these are voluntary, online, 30-minute sessions that happen at 8am AEST, to help you take time out to centre and reconnect before beginning your day. Claire Thomas leads the sessions, and you can contact her to learn more or express interest in leading your own. Keep an eye out for an email from Julie Edwards for the link to July's reflection.

NEWS | Commemorating Sorry Day and Reconciliation Week

Just News 136 arrived during an important and sombre week for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, as we marked National Sorry Day on 26 May and Reconciliation Week from 27 May to 3 June.

Staff at our central office in Richmond, which sits on unceded Wurundjeri country, took time to mark Sorry Day with a reflective afternoon tea. We watched two videos from The Healing Foundation (here, here), which showed the impact of colonisation and intergenerational trauma on First Nations people, and provided a point for group reflection and discussion about the collective action we can take to listen, learn and change.

Jesuit Social Services has a Reconciliation Action Plan as part of our journey towards being a culturally safe and equitable organisation. See the plan here, and flick back to Just News 132 to read an update of our recent activities under that plan.

STORY | How our volunteer Anne-Marie helps migrant professionals find work

Engineers, doctors and lawyers who arrive in Australia seeking asylum often face barriers to having their international experience recognised and accepted – which is why the support offered by leadership and relationship mentor Anne-Marie Quinn is so important.

Anne-Marie joined Jesuit Social Services as a volunteer in 2018, and runs interview skills workshops for participants in our employment pathway programs, including professionals from refugee backgrounds looking to resume their careers in Australia.

For our autumn fundraising newsletter, Anne-Marie told us she's motivated by the willingness of the people she supports to rebuild their careers in an often opaque and confusing professional world – read about their courage in this edition's story.

UPDATE | News from our settlement and community building programs

Our settlement and community building programs have had a big few months.

After two years online, Homework Club is back on-site! Our volunteer tutors have returned to the Flemington public housing estate (pictured above) two nights per week, retaining one night online to best meet the needs of students who found they learn better one-on-one over Zoom. We had 10 new student enrolments in an hour after the news, which is really promising – and we’re excited to be back.

After hearing feedback from some students who couldn’t do more online study at the end of a long day of remote learning, the Homework Club teamed up with The Outdoor Experience to create alternative learning in the form of experiential scavenger hunts for Homework Club students during school holidays. Students made the most of their two hours outside, and saw places in their neighbourhoods they’d never explored before.

You may have seen in our autumn fundraising newsletter we’ve partnered with the Australian Muslim Women’s Centre for Human Rights to strengthen the support we offer to refugee and migrant women around healthy and positive relationships. We delivered the six-week healthy relationship training we mentioned in that story, in English and Arabic, and had overwhelmingly positive responses – women told us no one had ever talked about this with them before, and they’re passing the information onto their children. It’s an opportunity for us to do much more – watch this space.

Thanks to Leanne and her teams for sharing this exciting update. We welcome news from every team – please hit the button below to let Just News know what your team has been up to lately, and have your work featured in our next newsletter. 

Harvest time at our Ecological Justice Hub in Brunswick, Melbourne.

Bright ideas at our central office

For those working at or visiting our central office site in Richmond, you'll notice we've replaced 188 outdated fluorescent globes with new energy-saving LED globes. A big improvement to our spaces, and, importantly, better for the planet: we estimate this will reduce our energy consumption by almost 80 per cent.

Ensuring our business processes are in step with our ecological justice goals is an important priority for Jesuit Social Services – you can learn more about this work here.

Central movements and new offices

That construction in north wing we mentioned in Just News 135 is now wrapping up! The Centre for Just Places team have started moving into their new office area (thank you to Andrea for the photo below), with some final minor works still to take place. 

The north wing boardroom is now in use, and has already been use to hold the IDAHOBIT celebration and the Sorry Day afternoon tea, which is pictured further above in this newsletter.

Payroll

A very warm welcome to Peta Fay, who has joined May in the payroll team.

Documents

Wanting to create or update a document? Please ask Kerry Durrand for the template or current version. This helps Kerry keep track of which documents are being updated – which, as you saw in her email mentioned above, isn't a small task!

Find your headphones, we've got some videos to share!

Check out this feature on our Victoria Police Diversity Recruitment Program, which helps candidates who represent and reflect their communities to sit the Victoria Police entrance exam – we supported people to build skills in first aid, fitness, maths and more, and are thrilled to share the program's soon expanding to recruit more participants from Aboriginal, Torres Strait Islander, and other cultural backgrounds. 

If you missed our Worth A Second Chance campaign webinar, School Not Prison, we recently uploaded a highlights clip here. You might recognise Caution, a young rapper with a history of justice involvement, who's just released the single Opportunity, a song "created from confinement" and written when he was 15 and isolated at a police station. It's a beautiful track, and a sobering reminder of the importance of our advocacy for a more effective and compassionate youth justice system.  

Staying with events, if you missed it in Just News 136, in mid-May our CEO Julie Edwards spoke with Fred Kammer SJ in an open conversation on Catholic Social Teaching and advocacy for Jesuit Social Services staff. Watch the recording here with the password D5+2YBN3. That conversation was the first in our Lunchtime Learnings information sessions for our staff, and we were pleased to host the second last month – an informative and fascinating chat from The Men's Project about our new initiative, Stop It Now!, a child sexual abuse prevention service. The service includes an anonymous helpline for individuals concerned about their own or someone else’s’ sexual thoughts or behaviours towards children.

And finally, read about our StandBy Support After Suicide program, see Andy Hamilton SJ's thoughtful reflection on Sorry Day and Reconciliation Week, and if you missed it, our media release responding to the Federal Election result – which demonstrated Australians want action to reduce inequality.

“It presents an opportunity to act as a role model to other members of my community, especially the young ones, because when they see people like them they understand that Victoria Police is actually there to do a job for every member of the community.”

 — Osman (name changed), Victoria Police Diversity Recruitment Program participant 

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.