Photo: Emilie Ng
By Paul Dobbyn
QUEENSLAND Parents and Friends Federation executive director Carmel Nash has called the relocation of the organisation’s office “a homecoming”.
The federation’s new office in the St Stephen’s Cathedral precinct was blessed and opened by Brisbane Archbishop Mark Coleridge on March 7.
Mrs Nash said the office had been located in the Catholic Centre (now Penola Place) when she first started work with the federation.
“We were co-located with the Queensland Catholic Education Commission at that point,” she said. “About 10 years ago a lack of room meant we were relocated to the June Dally-Watkins Building across Edward Street.
“Now that we’re back in the same building as the QCEC, it feels like a real homecoming.”
Among others present at the event were QCEC executive director Mike Byrne, Parents’ and Friends’ state committee chair Karl McKenzie and Deacon Russ Nelson.
Archbishop Coleridge, in blessing and opening the office, said “Catholic education is not just what happens in the schools, but also in some ways more primarily about what happens in the home”.
“That’s why parents have a unique role to play within the great dynamic of Catholic education,” he said.
“We pray that these offices and the people who work in them will serve the dynamic to make it even more powerful.”
The Queensland Parents and Friends Federation is a significant voice for parents of more than 140,000 students in Catholic schools across the state.
