By Fr Neville Yun
WHEN I was a deacon at St Stephen’s Cathedral I became involved with preliminary meetings of what was to become the Queensland Community Alliance (QCA).
The vision of this organisation is based on a Catholic social justice principle that the common good of individuals must be upheld.
The main stakeholders in this alliance are broadly churches, community organisations and unions.
Historically these alliances came about because there were pressing needs in the community like drugs and sexual promiscuity among youth.
Recently I was privileged to hear the experiences of community development from Lutheran pastor Reverend Terry Moe, from Portland, Oregon.
His community of Redeemer was experiencing gang violence and drug activity due to an increase in abandoned housing estates.
Initially they made contact with the police and discovered that they avoided the area because it was so dangerous.
In time the community was able to garner adequate support from not only the police, but from other organisations in the area including businesses, ethnic groups and schools.
They did this by conducting one-to-one relational meetings.
This entailed individuals taking the time to intentionally meet other stakeholders to find out what their goals and hopes were.
Once this networking had taken place, then a listening campaign was initiated to discuss and determine what issues could be tackled collectively.
Due to this new-found empowerment, alliances from the United States and London then invited political leaders to first listen to the many unheard voices at an assembly.
The political representatives are then asked to commit publicly to some concrete action such as pledging $1-2 million in funding for housing developments.
With the help of a community organiser they created an organisation called Salt and Light which became the social justice arm of their Church.
To understand the situation locally let me impart some community development theory.
Historically in Australia we have had three major sectors in our society – government, community and business.
From colonisation till the 1960s the community has played a huge role in establishing the social culture.
In the 1960s till the 1990s, the government began to take stronger controls over businesses and community organisations.
Finally in the past 20 years, there has been a visible shift towards large corporations controlling everything from privatisation, leading to higher costs of living, lower wages, less entitlements and the pressure of increased work performance.
I mentioned this alliance as an opportunity for all of us to reflect on the state of the nation and Ipswich, where I am an associate pastor.
The alliance is one way we can protect the values that our forefathers worked hard to protect – community, equality and dignity.
Our hope in the leadership of the alliance is to establish Ipswich as a viable district.
There is already a wonderfully strong community spirit here and so there is so much potential.
The QCA assembly is being held from 6-8pm at St Markís Primary School hall, Inala, on October 29. All welcome. RSVP online at www.qldcommunityalliance.org/calendar.
Fr Neville Yun is the associate pastor in Ipswich parish.
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