Anglican Communion News Service - Digest News

In 2000, Melbourne University student Matthew Albert, and his friend Anna Grace Hopkins, answered a request on a noticeboard at All Saints Church in Footscray to help a Sudanese family who had recently arrived in Australia. A few weeks later that first family invited their cousins along, and five years later, Matthew now heads 250 volunteers at the Sudanese Australian Integrated Learning (SAIL) Program, a non-profit organisation operating out of three Anglican Churches that aims to meet the needs of the single fastest growing ethnic community in Victoria.

Every week, over 400 Sudanese "SAILors" attend the six mini programs offered by the SAIL Program, including English as a Second Language tutoring for children and adults, playgroups for 0-5 year olds, extra-curricular short courses for school-aged children, excursions, Home Help for Sudanese single mother families, and camps.

"It's more about exposure to activities than quantified achievement," says Matthew. The program provides what may be for some children the only English language social interaction they get. Some of the children speak Arabic, the 'official' language in Sudan, while others speak their tribal language or Swahili.

The team of volunteers, who come from all age groups, give between three and twenty-five hours each a week to the programs, which run every week from February to December.

"All of the SAIL students are refugees from Sudan," says Matthew, explaining that while the Darfur crisis has attracted headlines in recent times, the civil strife has been raging for decades, costing nearly two million lives and crippling the economic and social development of the nation. Four and a half million Sudanese have been displaced. The camps through which most Sudanese have passed before coming to Australia are violent, subject to attack, and rife with disease.

"Almost all Sudanese SAILors have experienced some kind of trauma," Matthew says.

As well as helping the Sudanese arrivals to integrate into the community, the SAIL Program offers Community Talks designed to inform and empower the community about issues pertinent to them including housing, health, migration, tracing lost family members and job-hunting.

"Our ultimate aim is to be obsolete," Matthew told The Melbourne Anglican. He finds it exciting to be part of an organisation that is helping the most recent arrivals to Australia to find their feet in the community, and he is encouraged and inspired by the strength and determination of the Sudanese who attend the program.

"They are so motivated to make it work. They are so resilient," he says.

The relationships built up between SAIL volunteers and refugee families are such that "the one to one relationship means that the 'tutors' get as much out of it as the 'students'." Matthew and Anna Grace still spend every Christmas with the first family they helped.

Matthew is delighted by the support the Anglican Church has given since the very beginning. "The Anglican Churches have been so welcoming of the project," he says.

The SAIL Program has campuses at All Saints Footscray, St. James Dandenong, and St. Eanswythe's Altona. "The Vestries of the churches involved have been very supportive, and so have the Melbourne Anglican Foundation and Irene Donohoue Clyne [Diocesan Coordinator of Cross-Cultural Ministry]," he says.

Prospective volunteers can apply online on the SAIL website. Donations to support the program can be made to the Tax Deductible Migrants and Refugees Settlement Fund at The Melbourne Anglican Foundation, 209 Flinders Lane, Melbourne, VIC 3000

Article from The Melbourne Anglican - June 2005