Hi all,

it's been a while since I've dropped a line. year 11 has been ridiculously busy. I hope everyone's had a great year.

exciting stuff happening in Australia as the world approaches the halfway point for delivering the MDG's. The Make Poverty History Campaign, the Oaktree Foundation and Reach are organising a huge roadtrip from the 1/7/07 to the 07/07/07 that will hopefully help start a little more action, and I'm going! I'm soooo excited, it should be fantastic. They'll be supported by many of Australians finest musicians and we'll spend the week travelling around and raising some awareness!

I'd love to know what other people from around the world will be doing to mark the 07/07/07, )apart from the Live Earth Concerts, of course), so drop me line and let me know!

peace and love
Hilary

This post comes to you from Borgo San Lorenzo, a small town just outside Florence in Italy, and it's beautiful! I'm currently on an exchange over my summer holidays and am loving every minute of it, it's been great immersing myself in another culure and let's you appreciate the differences that exist in the world.

I hope that everyone has had a fantastic New Year! (Buon Anno Nuovo, in Italian!) I also thought I'd take the time to say that I hope that everyone is proud of everything that was achieved in the last year. Although I know that we are still a long way way from achieving all of the Millennium goals, and as we approach the halfway mark for the target of 2015 it seems that we have to be even more energetic in our effort to mobilise governments to come through on the promises they made in 2000. But after receiving a Millennium Campaign e-mail for the start of the new year, it stressed the importance of being proud of the achievements made so far and using them as our inspiration for doing even more.

I hope that everyone has a safe and fruitful 2007, may it be a year for even bigger and better things!

Peace/ Pace

Hilary

Saturday the 18th of November (the day agter formal argh...........4 hrs sleep............. headache!) I went with a small group of girls from our school and a few teachers to Kings Cross. For those of you who don't know Kings Cross is an area that is notorious for it's brothels, young boys prostituting themselves on "the wall" drugs, seedy nightclub- lined streets and scores of homeless people. It is an area that is interesting in that the incredibly rich live next to the dirt poor and despite millions of dollars spent by the government to "clean the area up" the core problem still has not been mended.

We spent the day under the care of the St. Cancie parish. Attached to the beautiful old church is a house that is the home for four jesuits, a soup kitchen, a house for refugees as well as an ecumencial dialogue centre.

Apprehensive at first, the area comes with a very negative reputation, we were spoken to by Fr. Steve and an Aboriginal woman named Sue. Sue was a user of the drug ice (methamphetamine) and was also homeless. Contrary to expectations (and I know we shouldn't have had any to begin with, but it is difficult to shake off your upbringing) she was incredibly articulate and open and one of the first things she said was that she would never let anything happen to us when we were in the Cross and we all found that incredibly tounching. A member of the stolen generation she was lucky in that she was adopted to a white family who loved her very much and educated her and treated her like she was their own. She met her original family when quite young. Her natural mother was and remains an alcoholic, while her natural father is a good man. While still at school her older sister died in a car accident on the way to pick her up from a park and her people refused to accept her as one of their own becuase she was raised like a white person- so that she felt like she was missing a part of her.

Eventually she turned to ice to ease her guilt and suffering and although she managed to hold down several jobs the drug eventually took over and she has since been on the street. Her story was incredible and we were all inspired by her incredible strength. I just hope we'll be able to do more work in the area again next year.

It just reminds you to never judge a book by it's cover!

I know this topic has been done to death but I think that the reactions to Steve Irwins death have been interesting. My friend was on a discussion board and someone had posted something along the lines of "I hates Steve Irwin beacause of how he made Australia seem and I think he deserved everything he got, he was an idiot."

Another reaction which I noticed at school was that although many people were quite shocked I heard some girls laughing. Not maliciously but I realised that they were only laughing at the death of the image, rather than that of the man himself. Interestingly enough when those girls were told that Steve Irwins niece attended our school, they suddenly stopped laughing. Coming to the realisation that it was in fact a tragic event in which a wife and two children had lost their husband/father at a ridiculously young age.

I think this situation can easily be applied to the issues experienced in trying to get young people, the ones with the most power, involved in making change. Because, thankfully, the majority of us have never expereienced anything like extreme poverty it is hard for many to simply feel motivated when it is very hard to know where to start and becuase it is much easier to simply pass it off as something that we can't change.

If people can't directly relate to a situation- if all they ever receive is numbers and statistics- then many can't feel directly attached to it or it seems like an outcome that cannot possibly be achieved. Because although the numbers are often shocking, many people do not really appreciate the scale of these numbers as they are often very hard to imagine. I think this is what everyone has to work on getting over in trying to get young people involved in making poverty history.

Returning to the original topic I think that although he had his controversial moments Steve Irwin was a positive marketer for Australia and that he was a genuine, dedicated man and I also think that it is important to consider everything before, if it's necessary at all, passing judgement.