Government grant will help ensure return to Moree
Brenton Stacey
Public relations officer
Cooranbong, New South Wales, Australia
Greg Combet meets students Amy Thompson and Hayden Lassila (right) and their Storm Co team on Avondale College’s Lake Macquarie campus. Credit: Kirsten Bolinger.
Federal Member for Charlton Greg Combet visited Avondale College Friday to meet students who gave up their holidays to serve in regional New South Wales.
The students joined a ministry called Storm Co (Service To Other Really Matters) to serve in Moree for 10 days in July. They ran a children’s club at the local PCYC in the mornings and weeded the garden of one of the town’s churches in the afternoons. They also collected rubbish from roadsides at the request of the local council.
A $5000 grant from the Australian Government will help ensure the students return to the town next year. The grant is under Volunteer Grants 2010, part of the government’s Community Investment Program. Co-leader Amy Thompson says her team of 18 sees it as a blessing. “When we heard the application had been successful, we thought, Sweet, how can we use the money to continue serving [in Moree]?”
The students will use most of the money to buy a data projector and a portable public address system, help cover the cost of fuel and offer training courses for others seeking to join Storm Co.
Greg impressed Amy. “He wanted to know what we’d done and, even better, what we were going to do,” she says.
The Seventh-day Adventist Church has been sending Storm Co teams of young adults into local communities since 1992, when a group of Year 12 students planned an adventure in service rather than a school leaving party. Their destination: Moree. The Avondale students who visited the town this year make up one of 39 teams in northern New South Wales. Two of these teams are also based at Avondale—students in these team visited Goodooga and Gwabegar.
Chaplain Dr Wayne French, a former director of youth ministries for the church in northern New South Wales, says service, particularly the enduring success of Storm Co, is popular at Avondale because “whenever we give, we get more than we give in return.” “Our students believe in experiential learning,” he adds. “They want to get involved, and they want to make a difference.”
Links
Storm Co briefing