May 27 to June 3 marks National Reconciliation Week, and this year the Heathdale community celebrated this week in a number of ways across both our campuses.
The week was first acknowledged in 1993 as a week of prayer for reconciliation, initiated by religious leaders across Australia. As a Christian community, we returned to the week’s origins in prayer by asking a number of students and staff from both campuses to write and share prayers for reconciliation. Some of these were collated into a video to be shared across our community, and some were shared during assemblies and morning devotions. Many of these prayers took as their inspiration the prayers written by Aboriginal Christian leaders across the country.
At Werribee, our Student Reconciliation Leaders (Year 10 and 11 students) led a number of lunchtime activities with Primary School students, reading them Aboriginal picture books and sharing a colouring-in activity with them, using artwork by local Kulin artist Annette Sax.
At the Melton campus, students were able to meet in the wonderful Yarning Circle set up in the library, where Year 5 teacher and proud Taungaurong woman, Miss Holly Callaghan, read a local Wurundjeri story and shared artefacts from her culture, including a possum skin cloak made by her mother.
Students and teachers also shared in assemblies and devotions about the importance of reconciliation in the Christian gospel. It was a wonderful time of reflecting on God’s work reconciling us to himself, and through this making it possible for all people to be reconciled to one another.