From Robert Stewart
THE parish refugee action group has done some networking with St Dominic’s in Camberwell. Their Welcome the Stranger group has hosted a refugee family for the last two years. We have had a very exciting development come out of that networking:
St Dominic’s have been very successful fundraising for the support of refugees and asylum seekers.
St Dominic’s have enough funds to partner with another parish in supporting a second refugee family.
They are interested in partnering with us.
Whilst details are yet to be finalised they have enough funds to go halves with us in the rent of a property to house a refugee family up to $10,000 per year for two years. This means we need only to raise $10,000 per year for two years. I am very confident we can do this.
St Dominic’s are happy to share their knowledge and experience with us to help us get our project off the ground.
St Dominic’s have in place and arrangement with Catholic Care to enable all donations to their refugee project to be tax deductible. We will be able to replicate this arrangement at St Bridget’s.
This means that our group’s aspiration to host a refugee family is now looking very doable.
This also means we will need a separate parish bank account for the refugee action group.
We will also have to work out details of signatories etc, but we can work that out as we go. I am interested in what your and Fr Dennis’s recommendations would be for how best to do this
The next meeting of the Action Group is on Thursday December 3 at 8pm in the narthex.