Admin

Aged Care Employee Day

by

Aged Care Employee DayAged Care Employee Day is an initiative of Leading Age Services Australia. It celebrates more than 360,000 aged care staff around Australia. Our theme #ThanksforCaring recognises each and every team member involved in caring for the 1.3 million older Australians receiving home care or residential care services. This includes nurses and care workers, allied health professionals, hospitality teams, drivers, cleaners, volunteers, lifestyle officers, administration staff and many, many others.
… Read more…

Loading

Upstanding citizens – Having the Courage to Care

by

Courage to Care logo

When you see something happening in public that you know is wrong, what do you do?

Maybe you’ve witnessed verbal abuse on the train, or sensed the threat of violence at a pub, or heard culturally insensitive language at a sports game.

Do you mind your own business and keep quiet? You’re just an innocent bystander, after all. Or do you attempt to help the person being targeted in some way?

If you try to help, you might be what the non-profit organisation Courage to Care calls an ‘upstander’.

… Read more…

Loading

Tibet and China clash over next reincarnation of the Dalai Lama

by
Tenzin Gyatso - XIV Dalai Llama

A couple of years ago, during a meeting of Tibetan leaders in Dharamshala in India, Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama, was asked about his reincarnation. Addressing the room of monks, religious teachers and Tibetan politicians, the Dalai Lama asked them to look into his eyes. “Do you think it’s time now?” he asked.

It was a meeting that would end with the Tibetan leaders agreeing that the issue of reincarnation was one that would be decided only by the Dalai Lama himself. But China, which annexed Tibet in 1951 and has retained tight control over the region ever since, has other ideas. It insists that the choice of the next Dalai Lama lies only with China, and have even enshrined this right into Chinese law.

The Dalai Lama, who recently turned 86, has insisted that discussions of his death are premature (according to his own visions, he will live to 113). But a power struggle for who will choose his reincarnation after he dies has already begun.

… Read more…

Loading

Tokyo Olympics: The medal winners’ flowers that pay tribute to 2011 disaster

by

Flowers at Tokyo Olympics

Winning an Olympic medal is a huge moment for any athlete, but there is special significance to the bouquet of flowers they are being handed at Tokyo 2020.

More than 5,000 bouquets are being handed to athletes at the Olympic and Paralympic Games.

The ceremonial blooms were mainly grown in three districts of north-east Japan that were devastated by a 2011 earthquake and tsunami, and the subsequent meltdown of three reactors at the Fukushima nuclear plant.

… Read more…

Loading

Care for Environment: Hinduism

by

Care for Environment: HinduismWhereas hurmans – men and women – pray to the gods and make supplications, offerings and sacrifices to these gods, in Hinduism, the Earth itself is one of the gods – She is One Goddess with many names – Mother Earth, Bhu-devi, Bhumi-devi, Prithvi, Mother Nature. Hence, the Earth is sacred, Nature is sacred and all who live upon her are obliged to make sacrifice and live in harmony with the Earth and all its creatures. This includes mineral life, plant life, animal life and all that exists in the wind, the waters, the heat and the soil.
… Read more…

Loading

Webinar – Behind the Altar – Understanding how we change the story in faith-based settings

by

Domestic Violence Resource Centre VictoriaWe (Domestic Violence Resource Centre Victoria) would like to invite prevention practitioners and anyone interested in preventing violence against women in a faith context to join us for a one hour webinar to share the findings of an evaluation of Anglican Diocese of Melbourne’s Preventing Violence Against Women (PVAW) Program. This webinar will provide learnings and practice examples for preventing violence in a faith setting.
… Read more…

Loading

DEFERRED: Prayer and Reflection Exhibition:

by

Prayer and Reflection

On account of the current Coronavirus restrictions, we will be unable to hold our photographic exhibition on Prayer and Reflection – neither Shepparton or Euroa – until after 10 August when the Premier will announce new Covid-19 restrictions. Stay tuned, we are definitely going ahead with this.

… Read more…

Loading

From a Cantor who goes running …

by

Sacher Park, JerusalemI have been a long-distance runner for most of my adult life: marathons, half-marathons, ultra-marathons, adventure races. Of all the places I’ve run, nothing really compares to the beauty—both natural and man-made–in Jerusalem, my newly adopted home. Within an area of just a few kilometers, I can be running around the walls of the Old City or inside a large urban wildlife refuge.
… Read more…

Loading

Social Housing Regulation Review

by

Social Housing Regulation Review

The independent Panel for the Social Housing Regulation Review has published a second public consultation paper on the Engage Victoria platform.

This paper focuses on the ‘consumer’ aspects of social housing regulation – the regulatory arrangements that influence the way services are delivered and tenants’ experiences of these.

Submissions are requested by 19 August 2021. Those people who seek social justice, and those who support the Greater Shepparton Winter Night Shelter Project may wish to contribute.

… Read more…

Loading

Sanctuary for those in need

by

Winter Night Shelter logo Greater Shepparton Winter Night Shelter is into its second month with strong support from the community and a high rate of utilisation from those who “roam the streets” and are homeless at night. Here, the Shepparton News interviews one participant and a volunteer on the team. Greater Shepparton Mayr Kim O’Keeffe also provides support.
… Read more…

Loading

GV Health COVID-19 vaccine update

by

GV Health logo Despite COVID-19 lockdown restrictions and other constraints, the GV Health vaccination program continues to steadily progress. Almost 40,000 vaccinations have been administered since March 10 across the local public health unit catchment area which includes five vaccination sites, a mobile outreach service and pop-up clinics.
… Read more…

Loading

Courage of convictions in the face of hatred a beacon of faith

by

Sir Thomas More

It is often suggested that courage is the foundational virtue because without it the other virtues can hardly get started. And of all its many forms, the most important is moral courage, which can change the world, from Moses before Pharaoh to Martin Luther King.

Thomas More is often upheld as an example of moral courage – he was resolute to death in defying Henry VIII’s Protestant reforms and in upholding his Catholic faith. Of course it helps to have a biographer like Robert Bolt, whose famous play A Man for All Seasons casts him in a beautifully roseate glow.

… Read more…

Loading

The Compassionate Companions Project

by

The Compassionate Companions Project

We have always said that yoga changes the world ONE YOGI AT A TIME. With this project, when you graduate you can do just that through your work as a Compassionate Companion. You can change the world, one person, one client at a time… or by enrolling your senior students with us, could be instrumental in helping hundreds.

It is up to you. This is not a counselling course. It is learning how to sit, how to Be, how to listen. ” Doing by not doing” as they say in the Zen tradition. It sounds easy – it is not. The simplest things turn out to be the hardest things.

The Compassionate Companions Project in collaboration with Australian Yoga Journal will present Training for Grief and End of Life Vigil – the “end of life doula”. This is a home study and Zoom course officially launching on the 22nd July, 2021.

… Read more…

Loading

Vital stories are discussed

by

Vital stories are discussedShepparton’s La Trobe University hosted a panel discussion on Thursday evening with authors from the recently released book Black, White and Exempt: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander lives under Exemption. La Trobe adjunct senior research fellow Lucinda Aberdeen co-edited the book with La Trobe associate professor Jennifer Jones, and said it brought to light important, littleknown stories from the period of exemption in Australia.

… Read more…

Loading

Shepparton Buddhists celebrate Vesak

by

Buddhist Association of the Goulburn Valley founder and president Sam Atukorala at Vesak 2021.Millions of Buddhists worldwide celebrated Vesak Day on May 26 — the day of May’s super full moon and lunar eclipse — but Victoria’s snap lockdown forced the Buddhist Association of the Goulburn Valley to cancel plans. Patiently they waited for a time when it was safe to observe the festivity.
… Read more…

Loading

Congregation gathers at cafe

by

Uniting Church TaturaHospitality is at the heart of Waranga Uniting Churches, according to minister Brian Spencer. And, although the decision to sell Tatura’s Thomson St church and move the congregation to a cafe may be surprising to some, it’s not so strange on second glance. ‘The church served us well, this will serve us better,’ Rev Spencer said. Context changes perception — churches can be forbidding, whereas a cafe has a friendly vibe.
… Read more…

Loading

Finding God in All Things

by

Finding God in All Things: The Ignatian YearFinding God in All Things: The Ignatian Year has begun. To find out more about events celebrating this remarkable saint and founder of the Society of Jesus. In the context of the Ignatian Year, a thoughtful reflection on St. Ignatius and his spiritual life journey. Was St. Ignatius a spiritual man? A saintly or holy man? A deeply God-fearing, prayerful man? Certainly not at least for the first 26 years of his life….
… Read more…

Loading