St Mary’s House of Welcome in Fitzroy has been operating since 1960, opening its doors daily to over two hundred people living in ongoing poverty. Each year our College undertakes a communal act of service to benefit this community as Christmas Hampers are compiled in House Groups and staff groups across Siena. This is a wonderful opportunity to discuss your daughter’s contribution to this outreach with her and visit https://www.smhow.org.au/ to find out more about this important justice initiative.
Our Dominican brothers and sisters in the Solomon Islands continue to encounter the ravages of climate change – in addition, young people are conscious of the ongoing effects they stand to inherit. Shannon Sogavare, 16, has already seen how rising sea levels have swallowed parts of her country's landscape. When the teen was younger, she would visit the islands of Choiseul province where her father, Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare, grew up.
"He would tell wonderful stories, like he and his brothers playing on the sandy beaches of Nuatabu and having to wake up very early in the morning to go attend church gatherings at the end of the village," Shannon says."The sad thing is that I never get to see the whole island of Nuatabu, which my father grew up in. The middle part of the island of Nuatabu is now fully covered with sea, leaving the island with two separate islands."
She fears what the archipelago's landscape will look like in years to come and is acutely aware of the threat climate changes poses to her home. Read more of Shannon’s story here.
