A Winter’s Tale provides hope to those on the margins
Sydney is in danger of telling a tale of two cities according to the urban mission and welfare arm of the Sydney Anglican Diocese.
Launching Anglicare’s Winter Appeal at their fundraising event A Winter’s Tale last week, Anglicare CEO Peter Kell said the divide between Sydney’s materially well off and those in poverty was an increasingly stark one.
For the homeless in this city Mr Kell highlighted there was a tale of two worlds “very different in terms of food, clothing, housing, opportunity and access to services.”
However “living on the margins is not simply about having a low income coupled with a self-inflicted inability to manage or a lack of control over circumstances. It is something far more complicated. It is about the complex interplay of health, education, housing, employment, and opportunity,” said Mr Kell.
“A Winter’s Tale gives the corporate world a chance to make a difference in the lives of those who have been marginalised; to help relationships to be healed and to assist communities to grow stronger.”
Challenging corporate guests to look at generosity as a way of life, not just a moment in time was keynote speaker and head of Medibank Private George Savvides.
"[Meaning] does not come from setting yourself financial objectives and seeking a great return on that financial investment over your lifetime. Sometimes we get trapped into that plan thinking that whatever we do accumulate in our life will actually give it that meaning and purpose," he said.
Speaking on valuing generosity and the investment of time and energy in social cohesion Mr Savvides said the tools that value such things "do not appear in the economy of man. We just don't have a broad enough array of measures and tools to value those priceless virtues and attributes."
Addressing the room of business men and women were also people like Stan Small who for the past 15 years have been walking the streets of Parramatta helping the homeless or those at risk of homelessness.
For Stan the defining moment as Anglicare Street Outreach co-ordinator was befriending a young man called Dwayne.
“He was twenty years old and living in a clothing bin,” said Stan. “As we got to know him he asked us to come around on our walks and knock on it. He was terrified he would die in there and no one would notice. 15 years later I’ve met thousands of Dwaynes.”
In a recent report launched by the National Youth Commission, an estimated 35,000 young people are homeless each night – almost double the number since the Burdekin inquiry in 1989.
Yet, currently only 14 per cent of the entire homeless population can access supported accommodation leaving one in two young people to fend for themselves.
For emergency relief co-ordinator Felicia Fitzgerald the event was an opportunity to show the true face of people who turn to Anglicare for assistance.
Looking over a sea of men and women from the corporate world she explained “Often they come to us as a last resort and are quite humiliated to ask us for help.”
“They are not scammers working the system. They are a mum running away with her children from a situation of domestic violence, an old man who comes in more for the company and a chat than a parcel of food, a family who lives far away and travels into Sydney for their daughter’s operations.”
Caramar, Anglicare’s program for pregnant or parenting young women were also given a voice on the day by program co-ordinator Louisa Fallon.
For more information or to donate to ANGLICARE’s Winter Appeal contact 13 26 22.
