John Humffray's Charter of Rights : Commemoration Service @ St Paul's : Eureka : Australia's founding document of participatory democracy

As we lead up to the Eureka anniversaries here is an event to put in your diaries.
Posted by Ballarat Reform League Inc. on Wednesday, 7 October 2015

Celebrating St Francis - 4 October 2015

St Paul's on historic Bakery Hill in ‪#‎Ballarat‬ 

is celebrating St Francis Day to-morrow. 

Please come along to the 10am service and bring kids and pets.

It is also the first anniversary of Advocacy at St Pauls. We are a social and environmental justice group within the Parish of St Pauls - but you don't have to be part of the Parish or even an Anglican to join. 

If you share our interests, you are welcome. 

You can learn more about us by perusing this blog. And stay tuned to us on Facebook and on Twitter. From now until December we have a very full schedule of events: two celebrations of Eureka events; and an environmental sleep-out referencing homelessness. 

So come and share with us.

Meeting times at the top of this blog.

Ted Lovett at St Paul's : a footy great tells us stories of Lake Condah, harsh treatment, life achievements and eels

 

Ted Lovett at the pulpit at Saint Paul's, Bakery Hill, Ballarat

 

 Ted Lovett, Father Constantine Osuchukuwu ,

with The Chair of Advocacy @ St Paul's,

Hedley Thomson 

Yesterday at St Paul's, we celebrated NAIDOC Week by having as our guest Aboriginal Elder Ted Lovett.  (For further NAIDOC week events in #Ballarat, please see the program embedded below.)

Ted, now in his seventies, is a Gundjit-Mara man from south-west Victoria - down closer to the Victorian-South Australia border. Ted said he hadn't been in an Anglican church in a very long time. He was raised on Lake Condah mission - a mission run by the Anglican church. He grew up in the very harsh conditions that modern Anglicans remember in shame.  This land was regained and taken back by the Gundjit-Mara under native title. The story of The Gunditjmara Land Justice story is embedded below.

The Budj Bim landscape in southwest Victoria is a traditional homeland of the Gunditjmara people, and is on Australia’s National Heritage List as well as in the process of being nominated for the World Heritage List. The area in and around Mount Eccles National Park has great cultural and historical significance to the Gunditjmara people, with evidence existing that their people once had a settled aquaculture society and engineered the stony wetlands around Lake Condah and Darlots Creek.  To read of the restoration of the wetlands around Lake Condah please go here.

This partnership is designed as a way of continuing the traditional land ownership strategies practiced by that society, as well as their contemporary techniques, as part of a broader view that Indigenous communities have the potential to provide new and unique viewpoints on land management. Read more here.

Uncle Ted spoke of the regeneration of the water and the lake.  I think that Uncle Ted had us in the palms of his hands as he spoke of these things.  At Cuppa Time after the service, he was warmly greeted ... and a few of us are thinking that we would like to see this country too.  And stories of the eels got our attention as well.

If readers would like to join us, should we finish up with a plan to go to Lake Condah, please be in touch with Advocacy at our email address in the side bar.

A vigil for victims of violence for International Women's Day. #MakeItHappen

8 March is International Women's Day.

This year's theme is #MakeItHappen.

St Paul's is  marking the event -

we want to make things happen for women

in Australia and across the world

who are victims of violence.

Check out the map below displaying the security of women

around the globe 

We want things to change so women, and their families, 

can live in peace.

Please help us to make the vigil a success by taking

the graphic below and using it for posters

and for emailing your friends.

Map above from here

Concerns for South Sudan & Northern Iraq being expressed to-morrow at Breakfast at Saint Paul's - and letter writing is on the agenda too.

One of the things planned for Breakfast at Saint Paul's to-morrow is highlighting the humanitarian emergencies in South Sudan and Northern Iraq.  (To find out more please scroll down the sidebar to Labels and look up the following headings: Humanitarian emergency; South Sudan; Iraq).  

We will be distributing this weekend at the Breakfast and as Sunday's services the pew sheet appeal for Northern Iraq authorised by Archbishop Friere, the Primate. This can be downloaded from this blog if you scroll down a little further.

We will be distributing as well as Letter Writing Pack in support of the emergency in South Sudan.  Below the documents in the Letter Writing Pack are provided so that readers can put together their own packs for letter writing.  The draft letter is intended as a guide.  The parliamentarians suggested are a guide too. Readers may choose to add or subtract their own recipients.

Breakfasting at Saint Paul's

To-morrow, Saturday, at St Paul's Bakery Hill in Ballarat

we are breakfasting at 8.30am.

After breakfast we will be watching the movie

Mary Meets Mohammad
Mary Meets Mohammad on Facebook

Mary Meets Mohammad selected for 
JAPANESE PREMIERE AT 9TH UNHCR REFUGEE FILM FESTIVAL - TOKYO. 
Sat 18th October 6pm Instituto Cervantes de Tokyo 
Sun 19th October 1pm Instituto Italiani di Cultura di Tokyo. 
Film in English with Japanese subtitles. In English with Japanese subtitles.  
http://unhcr.refugeefilm.org/2014/title-e/2014/08/2014k.php