SAIL Program Newsletter

Administration Meeting

Everyone is invited to a meeting lasting probably 2 hours at 6pm on 26 March, 2002 at Matthew's House, 56 Wattle Road, Hawthorn, 3122 (in case anyone intends sending themselves by post). We will be doing paper work for funding, sponsorship and partnerships for the Program from which everyone should soon reap the benefits.

Easter

SAIL will be taking place as normal on Easter Saturday. If you are unable to make it please inform us as soon as possible. We will possibly have a slightly shorter session and a very small easter egg hunt staggered by age group throughout the tutoring. SAIL will also continue through the school holidays.

Major changes

For the first (and hopefully the last) time SAIL is undergoing a major overhaul. The change date will be April 6, 2002. The changes for the spare time challenged are as follows;

What does all this mean for me?

It means choice and change for tutors and improved service to the people who need it most in the community. We would like everyone to stay with the SAIL Program as normal but starting at 10:30 not 11am. Because the students will arrive at this time and they will not have the chance to wander up the street, 10:30am start will mean just that. Not only will this mean the students will be more focused (as it will be their first activity for the day) but it will also give us all some Saturday back with an earlier finish.

Part empty cars with kindly drivers

With the change in time and due to a lack of funds to run the bus we are having to request the assistance of tutors with cars. We would like to have families allocated to drivers who drive by their houses each Saturday and collect them. All of the students live within 5 minutes of the church. There is a Melways map available with all the addresses marked. We hope that all those who are able to make a very slight detour with a couple of empty seats will regularly do so. Please call or speak to Matthew if you are able to collect anyone. The pick-ups will begin on the Saturday after Easter.

SAIL Extend students

SAIL Extend is specifically tailored to cater for the pressures of homework and high school for many of the community. Tutoring will be strictly one-on-one. At this stage we are hoping the following students will be involved in the Program; Achol, Manyok, Deng, Phillip, Johnson, Bosco, Winnie,

New Tutors

For SAIL Extend we will first be offering the ten tutor positions to existing tutors who either want to stay on and help in a more structured and focused session or tutors who are not able to make the earlier time but are still keen to be involved. If this is you please email or call us.

Similarly, SAIL Senior will require new tutors. To begin we require only three tutors. We expect this number to grow rapidly as word spreads in the community. Tutors will not be able to do SAIL Senior and SAIL because of the time overlap. However, if you would prefer this we will be more than happy to accommodate the shift.

Group emails

It has come to our attention that some people have overactive junk mail filters. If you did not receive our email about the meeting noted above could you kindly ensure that the SAIL email account is on your safe list. We promise absolutely not to bombard you with endless emails about the plight of North Albanian goldfish or the like. We even promise not to send many emails. It is enormously helpful to us if we can send the odd email as a reminder to people about upcoming events. Thanks in anticipation.

Bread

Sincere thanks to Maureen for collecting the bread for the Program. As the time shifts, we are hoping to get more donations of food so we can provide tutors and students with a basic lunch. If anyone has any contacts that may be able to help please contact us.

Library

Library tours have been very well attended and we want to thank people for taking the time to get acquainted with our cosy collection of books.

Please come and introduce yourself to our two librarians, Meg and Bridget. They will be working to catalogue and keep the library tidy- we're sure any assistance would be most welcome.

Website contributions

The website is for everyone at the SAIL Program. If you have any contributions you would like to make to the site please send them to the email address. The exposure may not be big for quantity but we can all attest to the quality of the readership!

Thanks for your ongoing involvement,
Matthew and Anna Grace