STUDENTS in Years 5-9 at St Joseph’s Nudgee College have donned their walking shoes on to raise funds for projects in the Philippines.
Students walked the 6.6km from the Shorncliffe Pier back to Nudgee College on October 16 to raise funds for the Philippines project.
At exactly the same time, children from the five Nudgee College twin schools in the Philippines were “walking to Australia”.
The solidarity project now in its third year is called Bayanihan, which is Ilongo for “Working Together to Lighten the Load”.
Nudgee dean of community and mission Chris Ryan said the idea was that when the 6.6km distance each of the 650 Nudgee students covered was added to the distance the students in the Philippines walked, the total would equate to the distance between Brisbane and the Philippines.
“The relationship Nudgee College has formed with our friends in the Philippines is profoundly humbling and highly valued,” Mr Ryan said.
“While in the Philippines recently as part of the Year 10 immersion program, we reflected regularly on the astounding hospitality, generosity and sincerity of our friends. “Our students came to see our friends as the face of God.”
Mr Ryan said Nudgee students were sponsored by family, friends and members of the wider community, with proceeds going to the Christian Brothers in support of “Anawim” (the dear little ones), a small residential community for children with impaired hearing in Kabankalan City on the island of Negros in the Philippines.
He said that, in the Philippines, the children were outcasts and did not receive adequate health care and education.
“In June, three Filipino women came to Brisbane to train with ‘Hear and Say’ to learn to care for these children. Nudgee College has made an ongoing financial commitment to sponsoring this important social justice work.”
The 2500 Philippine children who “walked to Australia” each paid five pesos for the privilege, which is about 12 per cent of most families’ daily income.
Mr Ryan said those funds would be used for service programs in their own country where people most in need are given rice.
He said some of the money would also be used to help victims of the most recent typhoons.
The Nudgee community is hoping its 2009 “Walk to the Philippines” effort will generate more than $25,000, the total raised in the 2008 walk.
