SAIL Program Newsletter

Welcome and welcome back to SAIL for 2002. We sincerely hope that everyone enjoyed the "summer" and had enough time to recharge their batteries.

New tutors

We are delighted to be welcoming a large group of new tutors to SAIL this year. Many responded to our advertisement in the Big Issue at the end of 2001. We have been somewhat overwhelmed by the number of experienced and willing people offering their time. We also had interest from inter-state and had to regrettably respond to these expressions of interest without any option but for them to move to Melbourne. As yet we have had no success on this front.

The new tutor response means that almost every child will soon be able to work one-on-one with their own tutor. An amazing achievment!

2002- SAILing in newseas.

In 2002 we plan to consolidate the phenomenal growth of SAIL in 2001. However, this does not mean things will stagnate. In fact, we have numerous ideas already in motion for the expansion of the program to better service the Southern Sudanese community. Our plans are listed below:

SAIL

It is our belief that SAIL ought to offer the students a variety of educational and recreational experiences. With this in mind, we included the word 'integrated' in our title. We have been working hard with our administration assistant, Jon, to source venues that may offer small groups of our students some chances that would otherwise be entirely unavailable to them. Out-of-hours visits to the theatre, zoo, museum or gallery would enrich the experiences of our students and give them the chance to enjoy some of the luxuries of life in Australia.

We are keenly approaching a long list of sources to try to establish an ongoing relationship to benefit the SAIL Program. We hope that everyone will be involved in this by year's the end.

Are you in contact with a venue, artist or event that may consider including us?
If so, please contact Matthew or Anna Grace.

SAIL Extend

In response to calls from tutors we are going to be launching a new branch of SAIL very soon under the banner SAIL Extend. In essence, this wing will aim to provide extra assistance to students of high school age. These students are the ones most desperate for one-on-one attention and extra assistance as homework regimes begin in earnest. SAIL extend will run 15 minutes after SAIL and for one extra hour. We are hoping that some tutors will be willing to either participate in both or move to SAIL extend. We will also be calling for more tutors and making use of the growing list of new tutors keen to be a part of SAIL.

VAIL?

Although in it's very early stages we have had an expression of interest of a program run on the SAIL model and perhaps sharing some facilities for the local Vietnamese community. We will keep you posted on any developments as they happen but any expression of interest from current tutors is, as always, very welcome.

SAIL Senior

Again, this is in its early stages, but we are hoping to launch a program for the adult members of the community. The purpose of this program would be for the adults themselves to learn English, but also to enable them to consolidate at home the what their children are learning at SAIL. SAIL Senior will probably run in conjunction with the government funded Adult Migrant Education Service office in Footscray. Again, we'll update everyone as more is confirmed.

All in all 2002 will be a big year for developing and expanding the Program. We hope that the SAIL will continue blowing in the wind of change.

Driving

This seems to be the most regular section of our newsletter. We are again appealing to all those coming to SAIL by car to inform us of any available seat they are willing to offer to a public-transport dependant tutor or a family of children who need to be collected. There seem to be only a few small areas from which almost all our tutors hail. The children all live in the Western Suburbs. As a result, any lifts kindly offered will not require any great trek to collect passengers.

Could we also request that anyone leaving by car and heading towards the city please either announce or ask someone else to announce their departure. Every week five or more people walk to the tram from the church, wait for the tram and eventually make it to the station. If these poor souls could get a quick lift this would make their journeys that much quicker and easier.