Volunteering as Faith in Action
Anne O’Donoghue
My name is Anne O‟Donoghue. By day, I‟m a primary school teacher. I‟ve taught on
Sydney‟s wealthy North Shore, in Kenya and Tanzania in East Africa, and in multi-
cultural, economically disadvantaged Catholic schools in Sydney‟s western suburbs, both
in ESL and classroom environments. I‟ve been very involved in teaching newly arrived
refugee students, mainly from Africa, and trying to adapt our teaching to meet their
specific needs. Currently I work at St Joachim‟s school in Lidcombe as a Kindergarten
teacher. I also sit on the Refugee Advisory Committee for the Sydney Diocese, as a
teacher representative. At night, I volunteer as treasurer for Food Water Shelter
Incorporated, a not for profit organisation, set up by five women (myself included) to
build and run eco friendly, early learning children‟s villages for vulnerable women and
orphans in developing countries. I also work on the committee of another not for profit
organisation, SSEG, which aims to build a high school for girls in Southern Sudan. I love
my day job, and it seems I‟m somewhat addicted to volunteering too.
• Photo slide show – „What have you done today to make you feel proud?‟
This session is about making ourselves uncomfortable. Discomfort urges action. For
better or worse, I feel uncomfortable most of the time – am I doing enough? How can I
help? How can I make better use of my gifts? Of my position? It‟s not about guilt. It‟s
about placing demands on myself, which I think are right and justifiable in my faith and
value system. Oscar Romero voices this perspective:
Those who, in the Biblical phrase, would save their lives – that is, those who want to get along, who don‟t
want commitments, who don‟t want to get into problems, who want to stay outside of a situation that
demands the involvement of all of us – they will lose their lives.
What a terrible thing, to have lived quite comfortably, with no suffering, not getting involved in problems,
quite tranquil, quite settled, with good connections politically, economically, socially, lacking nothing,
having everything.
To what good?
They will lose their lives.
“But those who… uproot themselves and accompany the people and go with the poor in their suffering…
and feel as their own the pain, the abuse – they will secure their lives, because my Father will reward
them.”
Archbishop Oscar Romero, April 1, 1979
This session is about considering the importance and significance of volunteering, for
ourselves and for our students and schools. Why would we do it? Why would we
encourage our students to do it? Is it enough to visit the Nursing Home once a month? I
would say no. Does a big trip to a small village in Africa make us special? Again,
definitely no. Volunteering certainly gives back to the volunteer, but is that why we do
it? Someone once told me „if it doesn‟t hurt a bit, it‟s not worth doing‟. I hope this
session will give you all the opportunity to reflect and to clarify where you see
volunteering fitting in with your own value set, and to share and collate some ideas about
how we can educate and enable our students to be more socially active.
• What is your faith? What do you believe? How does volunteering fit in?
• Venn Diagram – 1st circle
My faith is in love. I believe that God IS love. And I believe that love is compassion plus
justice, and that aspiring to live this is how we come closer to an experience of God.
„What does the Lord require of you, but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk
humbly with your God?‟ (Micah 6:8)
Not only does volunteering fit in with my faith journey. Without it, my faith falls apart.
I am not interested in any faith or religion that does not challenge me to be a kinder
person or a more ardent seeker of justice.
My beliefs are supported by three key sources. One is my own conscience. Another is
the model of Jesus. The following familiar gospel passage sums up what I believe
Christianity is all about.
(The Lord said to the righteous…) „I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and
you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and
you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited
me.‟ Then the righteous will answer him, „Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and
gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink? And when was it that we saw
you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing? And when was it that
we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?‟ And the king will answer them, „Truly I tell
you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you
did it to me.‟ (Matthew 25:35)
The social teaching of the Catholic Church is also pretty clear on how faith should be
lived out in practice. The principle tenets of belief are:
Human Dignity & the Unity of the Human Family – human rights are the things due to
us simply because we are human beings
Solidarity with the poor – Pope John Paul 2nd said: ‘Solidarity... is not a feeling of vague
compassion or shallow distress at the misfortunes of so many people, both near and far.
On the contrary, it is a firm and persevering determination to commit oneself to the
common good; that is to say, to the good of all and of each individual, because we are all
really responsible for all.‟
The Common Good – each social group must take account of the rights and aspirations
of other groups, and of the well-being of the whole human family.
Universal Destination Of Goods – the goods of creation are for the use of all. People
and nations have no right to squander resources when others are in need.
Participation – people (and organisations and groups) have both a right and a duty to
actively participate in those decisions that most directly affect them.
Subsidiarity – Keep it grassroots. People or groups most directly affected by a decision
or policy should have key decision-making roles.
For me, the model of Jesus, the church‟s social teaching and my own conscience all push
me in the same direction – give, share, love. And one way to act on this conviction is
through some form of volunteering.
• What is your story of volunteering?
• How does volunteering fit in with your faith? Venn Diagram – 2nd circle
When I was a teenager, I went to Catholic schools, and was heavily involved in my parish,
particularly through the Antioch youth movement. This was a great entry point for me
to begin volunteering experiences. I met lots of people and had many invitations to try
different things. I did training on the Community Visitors Scheme, an initiative of City
Mission in Newcastle, where I then lived. It involved making visits to a nursing home
once a week, to a lady who didn‟t receive many other visits. Also with City Mission, I got
on the roster for the Night Van, driving around the city in a group, offering hot soup
and snacks to homeless people. Both these experiences were character building, but I
was yet to find my passion.
I then got involved in Vinnies Kidz Kampz and became a camp leader. This I loved! I‟d
always enjoyed babysitting and hanging out with younger cousins, and had also begun to
teach Children‟s Liturgy. The Vinnies camps were absolutely uplifting, and helped me
find my way to teaching as a profession.
After a few years of teaching, and lots of research into volunteer options, I made my
way to Nairobi, Kenya, to be a volunteer teacher. I worked at a government school called
Ruben, in the middle of the second largest slum in Nairobi, which was (and still is) jointly
managed and funded by the Australian Christian Brothers.
The experience gave new perspective to my life. Education had recently been made free
in Kenya, but uniforms were compulsory, and many could not afford to buy them.
Children often came with no shoes, but while I was there, a new blitz was being carried
out and these children were sent home from the morning assembly. Similar to our „no
hat no play‟ policy here; in Ruben the new rule was „no shoes no school‟. Not for any
aesthetic reasons or school pride, but because without shoes, using the filthy pit toilets
was too unhygienic and disease would quickly spread.
At Ruben I taught remedial English classes to all ages, and worked with a young Kenyan
high school graduate, who was to take over after I left. My volunteer experience was
not just a job though. In Africa, it is your whole life. I was invited to meals with
students‟ families in their tin shed homes, I developed a taste for ugali and spinach, I
bought and delivered mattresses and set up grandmas in small business, I learned to
wash clothes by hand, shower by bucket and dance reggae style (and be laughed at for
not doing it too well).
I also worked at Engo Sengiu government school in Arusha, Tanzania, again supported by
the Australian Christian Brothers, who run a very successful secondary school next
door. Here, my job was to work with teachers, to help them build their base of practical
resources for teaching English, as well as to model some lessons, and to teach my own
English class for the most struggling students. This job was given to me because this
was where the need was. Before I went to Africa, I just „wanted to help‟ and was
frustrated to find it not as easy as that. Volunteering is about finding out what needs to
be done that matches what I am able to do, and then doing that. It‟s not all about me!
It did make a huge difference to me and how I try to live though. I will never forget so
many of the teachers and students I worked with, and still keep in touch with some. As
in our teaching work here, I may never know how much difference I made, but I tried,
and I hope that in itself made a difference.
My volunteering experiences in Africa led me to return home to a day job in western
Sydney, working with newly arrived Sudanese refugee students. I also did some
volunteering with Mercy Refugee Service, to be a friendly support to a struggling
refugee family. As in Africa, I learned so much about resilience and living life to the full
from this family. I helped out where I could with doctors‟ appointments and housing
applications, but mainly I was just a friend in a new country.
• FWS photos
When a couple of friends decided to start Food Water Shelter, I was keen to lend a
hand, not knowing how huge it was to become. We had all met in Tanzania a couple of
years before, and all five of us had been so profoundly affected that we wanted to
continue doing something. The idea was to build an orphanage for some of the many
orphans we had seen, and met, while we lived there. It was a need we knew existed. It
was a project we knew we could tackle.
Our ideas evolved and research supported our decisions to create something more
wholistic than an orphanage. We wanted to be environmentally sustainable, to give an
educational advantage to our orphans, to address and prevent health issues, and to
maintain the children‟s culture, through having local staff, one house mother for every
five children, and traditional crops and livestock. The name Food Water Shelter comes
from Maslow‟s Hierarchy of Needs, and refers to our intention to address these basic
needs, not as an end in itself, but to allow these children the opportunity to fully
develop as individuals, to attain self actualisation, to become leaders in their community
and country.
Three of the five of us girls are teachers and one is a social worker, so fws has
developed in line with our skill base. We do what we know we can. As Oscar Romero said
„We cannot do everything, and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that. This
enables us to do something, and to do it very well.‟
Food Water Shelter has now almost completed the building of Kesho Leo Children‟s
Village in a village outside Arusha, Tanzania. Kesho Leo means Tomorrow Today in
Swahili. We have employed around 20 local labourers, 12 house mothers, a cook, security
guards, teacher support and assistant manager. The house mothers have been
participating in training and education for most of this year; they will move in to Kesho
Leo and begin welcoming orphans in the new year.
Our three main areas of focus are education, sustainability, and health.
We approach education at four levels. We are creating a preschool, we will run after
school programs for our school aged children, we will offer our young people access to
vocational training or further education when they finish school, and we also run
education classes for the wider community.
Health is a huge need and something that we are addressing through building and
running a health clinic, which will be accessible to the wider community. We also run
health classes for our house mothers and the wider community. Ongoing counselling will
also be available, and there is a full time nurse on staff.
Sustainability is sought at every level of the project. In the building, we are
incorporating solar panels, water tanks (lots and lots of them!), biogas, grey water
collection and use. We are planting crops and will have livestock on the small farm, the
house mothers are setting up small businesses as a source of extra income, and, while
overseas volunteers are a crucial part of the establishment phase and will always have
valuable contributions to make, the management of Kesho Leo is moving towards being
wholly local.
In Australia, there is a whole team of volunteers also doing great work, to make the
work in Tanzania possible. We have fundraising coordinators, merchandise manager,
volunteer manager, corporate liason officer, media and marketing manager, accountant,
secretary and many more people who help out in quiet but invaluable ways.
Anna Dimo is a friend of mine and this is her volunteering story. She is a Sudanese
refugee, who was a teacher and a principal in Sudan. She fled to Egypt nearly 20 years
ago, spent 11 years there volunteering with the Sisters of Mercy, as a single mother of
five, and surrogate mother to three more (her sister‟s children). She came to Australia
on a refugee visa, with eight children and no English, in 2002. Anna was the President of
the Aweil Community of Australia for four years and works as a Bilingual Teacher‟s Aide
across three schools in the Sydney Diocese. She also sits on the Refugee Advisory
Committee. But does her giving stop there?! I don‟t think Anna believes in sleeping. She
says that she‟s had a dream for a long time to give back to the Aweil community she left
so long ago. She is a teacher, and an empowered woman, and she wants other young
Sudanese women to have opportunities like her. So, she is building a high school back in
Aweil, Sudan, and is being supported by her own community in Sydney, as well as by the
CEO and a group of teachers (including me). The organisation is called South Sudan
Educates Girls (SSEG) and it has already been granted a large block of land by the
southern Sudanese government, on which to build the school. Fundraising has begun in
Australia, and we are hoping that many schools will get involved.
• SSEG Powerpoint
I look for volunteering paths that I know I can do. It doesn‟t always work that way,
though. Sometimes things just have to be done. Like being treasurer for Food Water
Shelter. Not my area of expertise, to put it mildly. But it needed doing, so I filled in.
Thankfully I‟ll be passing that job on soon, and be able to focus on developing our
education programs, with the other teachers on the Board. Anna decided to start a
school, because education is what she loves, and what she knew she could do well.
• How do we draw students in to this way of living their faith through volunteering?
• Venn Diagram – 3rd circle
When I was a first year out teacher, I was shocked at the worldliness of my Year 4
students. I was teaching in a very wealthy area of Sydney; most of the children had
excessive material possessions, and interpreted the value of things according to their
price tag. I was teaching an RE unit on Heroes and Saints, and decided to make it a little
more practical. I rewrote the unit, to enable the students to discover real life heroes
and sainthood, and to emulate the qualities and actions they admired. They visited the
special school next door and learned a bit of Braille and sign language and played with
the children there over the year. They planted a new garden for the nuns at the school.
They exchanged letters with sick children at the Children‟s Hospital. They wrote to the
Paralympic Australian team (being the year 2000) and they raised money for a project
in Peru, which was a focus of the school at the time.
Ever since then, I have tried to include social teaching in every unit I teach. Even with
my current Kindergarten class, we are a culturally diverse group, so we teach a unit
called „How we are alike and different‟ and focus on multiculturalism and celebrating our
diversity. We‟ve just finished teaching a unit on „Special Places‟ but have approached it
from an environmental viewpoint, focusing on recycling and reducing water and air
pollution. Five year olds love this stuff! We can empower our students through
education, to be significant contributors to a better society.
I want to teach students that they have an obligation, born of privilege, to contribute.
Oscar Romero (yes, again!) says:
Peace is not the product of terror or fear.
Peace is not the silence of cemeteries.
Peace is not the silent result of violent repression.
Peace is the generous, tranquil contribution of all to the good of all.
Peace is dynamism. Peace is generosity.
It is right and it is duty.
Literature is a powerful means of social teaching. There are many beautiful books for
children and young adults that encourage deeper thinking, tolerance, sharing,
environmental responsibility, self-sacrifice. I have a small list here, of some of my
favourites. I‟m sure you may have many more, and hopefully we can share some of those
in a moment. We can use this literature in so many ways in the classroom and the whole
school setting.
Linking with a specific project or organisation, like Food Water Shelter or SSEG, to
bring relevance and shared experience is another powerful way to engage students in
volunteering or fundraising. I have some helpful websites here and they will be posted
with this paper, and the literature resources, on the CaSPA website after the
conference.
I‟m hoping that you can now take a few minutes to list some of projects or activities
already running in your schools. It would be great to pool some ideas, to take back to our
own schools. After all, we‟re all about teaching. We can contribute ourselves by
volunteering and that‟s great, but we, as teachers and especially as principals, are in a
position to multiply by hundreds, by thousands even, the number of people prepared to
volunteer, prepared to feel responsible for their neighbour, prepared to care, prepared
to act.
• Pooling of ideas here today Venn Diagram – 3rd circle
Resourcing
Literature:
• One Child, Christopher Cheng – picture book, environment
• So close your eyes and just IMAGINE, Garry Fleming – picture book, environment
• Window, Jeannie Baker – picture book, environment
• Uno‟s Garden, Graeme Base – picture book, environment
• Jungle Drums, Graeme Base – picture book, celebrating diversity
• The World That We Want, Kim Michelle Toft – picture book, environment
• Cry Me A River, Rodney McRae – picture book, water pollution
• The Short and Incredibly Happy Life of Riley, Colin Thompson – PB, simple living
• Whoever You Are, Mem Fox – picture book, celebrating diversity
• The Arrival, Shaun Tan – graphic story, 10 +, immigration
• If The World Were A Village, David J Smith – information, 8+, global statistics
• Oi! Get Off Our Train, John Burningham – picture book, endangered animals
• Whaddayamean?, John Burningham – picture book, environment/peace
• This is Our House, Michael Rosen – picture book, sharing/accepting diversity
• For Every Child, UNICEF – picture book, Rights of the Child UN charter
• Prayer for the twenty-first century, John Marsden – picture book, war/peace
• Children Just Like Me, UNICEF – information, different cultures
• Glory Garage, Nadia Jamal and Taghred Chandab – young adult, cultural issues
• Under the Persimmon Tree, Suzanne Fisher Staples – young adult, Afghanistan war
• We Are the Weather Makers, Tim Flannery – abridged information, environment
• Mao‟s Last Dancer (abridged version), Li Cunxin – young adult, Chinese culture
• Once, Morris Gleitzman – 10+ novel, Jewish Holocaust
• The Boy in Striped Pyjamas, John Boyne – young adult novel, Jewish Holocaust
• Chinese Cinderella, Adeline Yen Mah – 10+ novel, Chinese culture
• Falling Leaves, Adeline Yen Mah – 10+ novel, Chinese culture
• The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time, Mark Haddon – YA novel, Autism
• Race Against Time, Stephen Lewis – adult, global issues, poverty
• The Algebra of Infinite Justice, Arandati Roy – adult essays, global issues
• From Poverty to Power, Oxfam – adult, global issues, poverty
Websites:
• SAILS (Victoria) Homework support community based - home.vicnet.net.au/~sail/about.htm
• SPARK (Vinnies) Homework support – kids, parents, toddlers - www.vinnies.org.au
• Mercy Refugee Service/ Classroom Connect Literacy support – www.mercyworks.org.au
• RAS (Refugee Action Support) Trainee teachers providing literacy support, to attain course credits –
read about it in the online Curriculum Leadership journal -
www.curriculum.edu.au/leader/refugee_action_support_program,23342.html?issueID=11438
• UNICEF - www.unicef.org.au/SchoolRoom.asp - Great teacher resources
• Oxfam - www.oxfam.org.au/ - click Resources, then Teaching Materials
• Food Water Shelter – www.foodwatershelter.org.au
• SSEG (South Sudan Educates Girls) – www.sseg.org.au
• Caritas - www.caritas.org.au Incudes teaching resources
• Information on social teaching, teaching/learning activities and excellent links to Australian Catholic
Social Justice Groups, National Catholic Agencies and International Resources -
www.socialjustice.catholic.org.au/
• Great resources - www.faithdoingjustice.com.au/
• Refugee Council of Australia - umbrella organisation, includes information, links to agencies -
www.refugeecouncil.org.au
• Edmund Rice Centre, great resources, links and information - www.erc.org.au
• PALMS volunteering organisation – www.palms.org.au
• Jesuit Refugee Service – information, links, volunteering – www.jrs.org.au
• Australian Volunteers International – www.australianvolunteers.com
• Uniya Jesuit Social Justice Centre – www.uniya.org
• Office for Social Justice – St Paul and Minneapolis – teaching resources
www.osjspm.org/social_teaching_documents.aspx
• World Youth International volunteer agency -