E-Card Campaign - Close the Gap in this years Federal Budget

Now is the time to show your support for the apology of 13 February and urge the Government to carry forward their promises. The Social Action Office has launched an e-card urging the government to allocate the additional $460 million (the amount recommended in the Oxfam CLOSETHEGAP campaign) in this year?s federal budget to set up the action plan and programs to achieve better health outcomes for Indigenous Australians. Government departments are working on budget submissions for the 2008/2009 budget now.
There are 2 cards ? one to the Treasurer, Wayne Swan, and the other to the Minister for Aboriginal Affairs, Jenny Macklin. Click here to access the e-card from the SAO website. http://www.sao.clriq.org.au/indigenous_issues/indig_health_ecard.html

morepraxis on facebook

So a week or so ago I was chatting with someone who mentioned they had joined the morepraxis group on facebook. They wondered if I was going to join. Meanwhile back at the ranch Mike aka ‘redfish’ and I continued our chat about how we could make it easier for morepraxis members to get to know each other on the site. As I was not on facebook I had to join to check it out. I found the group and who was the almighty creator but Mike. He had started the group to see what would happen. He had a big grin on his face when he discovered it took a day before I found out and was invited to join. I was the 11th member now up to 48 members.

Anyhoo if you are a part of facebook we have a group. So invite people to join and feed morepraxis into your space by being my friend. If your not then don’t worry we are still looking to expand/play with the rss feed (your feeds) so we can see what we are up to from our different networks.

After a couple of coffees at giant steps Mike and I thought that our facebook space is like the tables inside our more public cafe of morepraxis.org.au. Here around our virtual tables we can carry on smaller conversations, conspire and meet the morepraxis tribe - Basically it’s like a giant “get to know you game”

Bangladeshi Trade Unionist in Danger

This is urgent - please act and pass this message on to friends, co-workers and colleagues. Mehedi Hasan, a field investigator for the U.S.-based Workers Rights Consortium, was jailed seven days ago in Bangladesh as part of crackdown on trade unions.

His family is not allowed to see him, and workers’ rights activists have expressed fears for his safety.

Please help us to mobilize thousands of people around the globe in a massive email campaign and flood the Bangladeshi government with messages calling for his immediate release — and for an end to repression of trade unionists in that country.

Click here now to send a message to Bangladesh

Fair Trade Volunteer Workshop

The workshop is being run by People for Fair Trade and will:

• Have a few people talking about how they have promoted fair trade in their network and communities
• Discussed some common questions about fair trade and how to respond to them
• Talk about how fair trade fits in the bigger context of addressing global poverty.

RSVP by Friday 15 February e-mail orders@fairtrade.asn.au

30 Wellington Rd, Clayton

 

Sorry

Well it happened!!!!? It seems a weird mix of emotions that saying ’sorry’ wells in me the need to celebrate.

I’m sure most have seen it but just in case.

Links and a full transcript here

Back at Sahara

Dear Morepraxis,

It?s a year and a bit on and Angry Young Thing is back at Sahara.

We all need your prayers and support over here in India. Here?s a little glimpse of the situation as it stands. Many Blessings, Cara

____________________________________________________

It?s Monday afternoon and I am under a flyover, balancing on the curb of one of the busiest intersections in Old Delhi. In the short space between the base of the flyover and previously mentioned curb, is a dusty gulf on which some 20 blanketed bodies lie.

They could be dead but for something in the mosquito spotted air above their heads that aches out ?life?

Beside the bodies, touching evidence of shared humanness. A single cup, a plastic jug, razor blades, medicine ampoules and match ends. A shoe.

To breathe in is to inhale toxic emissions and crystallized urine.

To loose balance is to fall headlong into oncoming traffic.

This is not the sort of place a foreign tourist goes. It?s not the sort of place anyone willingly goes. It is, however, where many people marginalized by addictions, poverty and HIV/Aids live, and where Robert and the Sahara outreach team daily visit.

[Read more]

UCA - Welcomes Apology

?Bear fruits in keeping with repentance (Luke 3:3)

The Uniting Church in Australia and the Uniting Aboriginal and Islander Christian Congress (UAICC) have today congratulated the Federal Government on its planned formal apology to members of the Stolen Generations.

A formal apology was made to Australia’s Indigenous people by the Uniting Church more than a decade ago.

The President of the Uniting Church, Reverend Gregor Henderson, said the Christian view of confession was a recognition of wrongdoing.

“We take confession to mean that what has been done is not in accordance with the hopes and possibilities that God has for us,” Rev. Henderson said……

continue reading more here?

Also have a poke around therest of? UCA- NYYAM site for exposures, info & resources

TEAR - Political Alerts

Hi Guys here is info & link to TEARS new alert/response system it sounds like it works simliarly to the ACOSS one.

We invite you to sign up for our powerful new online and email advocacy tool: Changemakers Political Alerts. This email and web interface will put you directly in touch with your own MP or Senator when they speak about the issues that TEAR Australia tracks. Backbenchers and Senators make speeches or comment about issues of global poverty in Parliament, or even in local media, and it is often little reported. Indeed, politicians expect to receive little or no feedback from their electorate about these issues. Global poverty and justice, it seems, hardly rate at all compared to petrol prices, graffiti, and noisy neighbours. Letters about these topics regularly fill the in-trays of federal MPs!

Through Changemakers Political Alerts, when your own MP or Senator speaks about global poverty, the Millennium Development Goals, poor-country debt, refugees and asylum-seekers or the development impacts of climate change, we will track it through Hansard and other news alerts and send an email to every Changemaker in the electorate, asking you to respond. A one-click response will allow you to personalise a pre-generated email reply which is ready to go directly from you to your MP. Direct, relational, representative democracy in action.

To sign up for this system, please follow this link http://changemakers.tear.org.au and confirm your details.

Together we can continue to make change, encourage our elected representatives to focus on issues of global poverty and justice, and hold them accountable to the commitments they make.

AI-Happy Chinese New Year postcard

Print out this postcard on your regular home or office printer. You don’t need to print both sides of the card, it’s the message to Director of State Council in China that we want.

Place your signed greeting in a stamped envelope and send it to us at:

Amnesty International Australia Locked Bag 23 Broadway NSW 2007.

We will bundle all of the greetings together and send them to the Director.

Download the printable postcard here.

Pray 4 Rod

Today and 10am Rod Dungan has major heart surgery. Many of you know Rod from upper room project and generally being infamous in the UCA youth scene and developmental assets scene,. Please join me in praying for a successful operation, a quick recovery and peace for Rod and his family during this time.

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