The “Feast for Freedom” lunch last Sunday at St. Michael’s Hall was a very successful event in many ways. It was a project suggested by the Asylum Seekers Resource Centre (ASRC) as a way of raising money to support their work in providing resources for people seeking asylum, resources including food, accommodation, medical services and advocacy. Through the generosity of the SHAP community, not just with money, but with hard work, we raised $4185. Across the country, 900 events were hosted and $330,000 was raised in total.

We had a wonderful team of nine parishioners who had cooked a delicious array of dishes using recipes donated by refugees. Others donated time and energy for the setup and the return of borrowed goods to St. Peter’s and when it was over it was all hands on deck to clear up after the meal. It was a very positive community event and the speaker, Blaise Itabelo a refugee from the Congo who spent 16 years in a refugee camp before coming to Australia, left us with sobering images from his experience. It was a challenging food for thought. 

During the church service preceding the lunch, Blaise was interviewed by Jeff and described briefly the work that he was doing with CRISP (Community Refugee Integration Settlement Pilot) which involves small groups from the community supporting a family of refugees in their first year in Australia. The link to the CRS website is https://refugeesponsorship.org.au/

Louise Kaye