Month: March 2016

Caritas Challenge 2016 – Supporting our brothers and sisters in our common home.

Caritas (Catholic Agency for Justice, Peace and Development) promotes the Caritas Challenge.  The purpose of the Caritas Challenge is to fundraise, educate and raise awareness for people and places that they work with.  This year the focus is Cambodia and Challenge 2000 kick started the Wellington area campaign over the weekend of 1st-2nd April 2016 in Johnsonville.  Schools were invited, and they responded with enthusiasm and passion.

We organised to sleep in boxes overnight, workshops, activities and games, presentations, set up a room to look like a Cambodian home, reflections and prayer.  We had guest speakers – Nick from Caritas, Kitty McKinley and Geoff Rahari – as well as visits from Cardinal John, Peter Dunne, Deputy Mayor Justin Lester, local Dominican Sisters, parents, a youth worker from BGI, Emily from Young Church Ministries, teachers and supporters.  Thank you to everyone who came together to support the cause – the overnight security team, the cooking team and the background missions team.

Thank you to the Colleges who took part – St Bernard’s College, St Patrick’s College Wellington, St Catherine’s College, St Mary’s College, St Patrick’s College, Silverstream – your students’ input was valuable and we enjoyed being with them.

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Challenge City

 

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Children’s Day – Te Ra O Te Tamariki – Celebrating our Children

On Sunday 28th February, Challenge 2000 celebrated an early Children’s Day.  Children of all ages were entertained with a bouncy castle, face painting, bead/jewellery making, a tug-of-war, sack races, paper plane making and shared food, drink and fruit.  Smiles were ear to ear and laughter was heard all around.  One of the best things of the whole day was the presence of twenty five volunteer youth leaders who organised all the activities and made sure that the young ones had a great time.  A great day for children and their families!!

“The soul is healed by being with children.” Dostoyevsky

“Children are the living messages we send to a time we will not see” – J F Kennedy

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Kia mau i a ratou te ihi

They hold the delight of life

Kia mau i a ratou te wehi

They hold the awe of life

Kia mau i a ratou te wana

They hold the love of life

The greatest thing we can do is love them and spend time with them.

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Mana Athletics Day

Mana College held it’s annual athletics day at the Titahi Bay Athletics Club in Kura Park.  Four members of our “Youth Workers in Secondary Schools” (YWiSS) team helped with the running of the day by supporting staff with events such as high jump, long jump, time keeping or being a year group marshal.  Website 1 Website 3

All in all, it was a great day with some healthy competition and in-house rivalry, which featured a staff relay that included some of our team.  Fair to say there were some seriously competitive teachers on the track!!!

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