SAIL Program Newsletter

The 'let us know' list
1. If any of your contact details have changed, please let us know.
2. If you are planning to have contact with your student outside of SAIL hours you must let us know first and then complete the contact request form.
3. If you intend to bring a friend to SAIL please direct them to the website first and direct them to apply online or just let us know beforehand.
4. Let us know if you are going to miss a Saturday by email, phone or the "Can't Come Sheet".
5. Please check your email account each week- if possible, Friday is best!
6. Please let us know before you speak publicly or publish an article about SAIL.

Important Diary Dates (Please note that SAIL does not take school holidays or long weekends off!)
1. Tutor Talk (in service) sessions are at 12:30pm on Saturdays 26th July, 30th August, 4th October, 8th November, 13th December.
2. Please bring any second hand clothes for recent arrivals in the Sudanese community on the Saturday before Tutor Talk weeks.
3. There is no SAIL Xtend on the listed dates ie no Arabic or short courses.

Cars and lifts
1. Flinders Street- there are three cars that collect tutors from Flinders Street station every week. Cars leave at 10:05am from (and returns to) the post box on Flinders Street. Feel free to catch the lift!
2. Clifton Hill, Brunswick, Parkville, Collingwood, St Kilda, Richmond and Ringwood also have tutor collection points. Contact the co-ordinators for more information on 9819 5223.
3. Car drivers please note that, unless you are bringing non-human cargo to SAIL, we ask that you park your car in the Mephan Street car park located on the far side of the school (at the top of May Street) or, if you are early, at the front of the church on Ballarat Road.

Ongoing offers
1. Arabic classes- free to all SAIL volunteers from 12:30 – 1:15pm.
2. Photocopying- for any SAIL related photocopying, simply mark the pages from the books you want copied and give the book to Matthew or Anna Grace on Saturday- it will be ready for you the following week!
3. If you would like to post an ad or some other information relating to SAIL or another not-for-profit venture in which you are involved, please email the text and it will be included in the next newsletter.
4. The Tutor Resources section of the website is available at all times to provide tutors with ideas, games, work-sheets and support. We strongly suggest that if you are experiencing difficulties of any kind when working with your student, you post a request for advice on the SAIL Panel of Experts Bulletin Board (accessible from the Tutor Resources section).

Please read this entire document in the following week it gives updates on SAIL past, present and future!

Happy Holidays
Just a reminder that SAIL will continue uninterrupted throughout the holiday period. If you’re going away please let us know the dates. Congrats to all students who have finished assessment!

Bulletin Board frenzy
The SAIL Panel of Experts Bulletin Board has gone crazy! We encourage everyone to pay it a visit and read over the exchanges of question and answers that it is hosting! For those who are still yet to register, your absence is conspicuous, please register when you get the chance. The Bulletin Board is available through the Tutor Resources section of the website. Thanks to all those who are making it do its job!

SAIL About needs you!
If you have ever wished you could take your students or pick-up families to whatever latest fabulous show is on in town, but don’t know how to go about doing it, you may be interested in joining our donations team. We already have several volunteers who help us to get tickets to the theatre, museums and the like for our SAIL About excursions. We need a few extra hands on deck. We have standard letters and faxes that can be sent out to companies and a successful formula of begging and pleading which has served us very well in the past. With shows like Circus Oz, Disney on Ice currently on stage, and kids holiday movies out in the cinemas, this is great time to clamber aboard the SAIL About boat and enable our kids to have some very special holiday experiences. Drop us a call or email if you’re interested.

Still seeking…
Home tutors for three male students, including the incomparable Akon Deng Shok, Sudanese rock-star and our volunteer driver. Drop us a call or email if you or someone you know and trust is interested.

Street Beat
We hope everyone is feeling happy with the May St parking situation. A combination of people leaving their cars in the Mephan St car park and our wonderful road-watching volunteer Angelo has seen the number of near critical squashing incidents on the street reduced to zero. To those who don’t know – there is a blanket ban on parking in May Street itself - please, please park your cars in Mephan St and the car park attached. We now have over 60 cars in the SAIL fleet who collect people from all over Greater Melbourne and then come to settle in May St. Thanks for helping out – a little inconvenience makes May St much safer!

Bringing kids
We just wanted to note publicly that any SAILor with children is more than welcome to bring them to SAIL each and every Saturday. Children under 6 will gladly be accommodated and included in the fun and frivolity of the Junior room. Children between the ages of 6 and 14 are also more than welcome. We would encourage these children to stay and work alongside their parent at SAIL. Children over 14 are also more than welcome. Children of this age are encouraged to join SAIL in their own right and help out in the SAIL Junior room. In short, the child of a SAILor is as much a SAILor as their parent. All children are very welcome and there is no need to check with us!

Plastic bags request
Once again we put a call out to all those stashing away plastic bags from the supermarket and storing them for the day when plastic bags are outlawed or on the endangered list. Anyone who has more than their fair share of these specimens is asked to kindly donate them to SAIL for use as bread carrying facilities for the donated bread we receive each week.

Compost needed
A SAIL Home Helper is working with her host family to build a veggie garden. They need to build it above ground due to the rock-hard soil in the garden and are looking for some donated compost. Can you help?

Want to add to the newsletter?
Although only one other person has ever contributed to the newsletter in the past, we would like to let everyone know that all SAILors are more than welcome to contribute to it at any time. Please send us any section you would like added via email whenever you wish. Please note that although there are no word limits we do require a minimum of one terrible pun per section.

Diary Dates and SAIL turns two!!!
Please note that the next Tutor Talk date will be 26 July 2003. We will email you closer to the date to confirm which speakers will be presenting. Thanks to all those who attended our special World Refugee Day Tutor Talk last cycle and for being such an open and giving audience to the superb speakers!

We also wanted to flag the major celebration for the SAIL community that is coming up at the end of August. On Saturday 30 August 2003, SAIL will officially turn two. We will let you know the details of the concert and celebrations during this week closer to the time. For the time being, please keep that Saturday free until at least 1pm. We are also hoping to host a celebratory dinner for SAILors on Friday 29 August – we would love for everyone to join us!

JOB SEEKERS SECTION
Babysitters wanted
AG is looking for enthusiastic individuals to share some of the babysitting work she finds increasingly hard to fit in. There are currently many lovely families in the /Clifton Hill/ Northcote/ North Fitzroy/Carlton area who need babysitters for daytime and night-time care, with kids of all ages, both regular and irregular –all flexible including fee which is usually between $10-15 depending on various factors. There are also a few families in Elwood, Camberwell and Thornbury. AG would love to be able to give the jobs to some SAILors and asks keen individuals to get in touch via phone, email or text msg.

SAILing to China?
In two years there have only been two main reasons why people stop SAILing: because they get a new job or they move away. One such former SAILor is Michael Rose who is currently teaching ESL in China. He emailed us to offer a job to any SAILor who is interested.

He wrote, 'I'm writing because the school I'm working for has vacancies for English teachers, or to put it another way, anyone with a uni degree who wants to teach English. The job is a fairly wide ranging one. You get to teach everything from the local tech school, to grade two primary kids, to kindergarten classes. Enthusiasm is the main qualification needed. Conditions are excellent. The school district is very keen to attract foreign teachers so they throw in all sorts of great stuff such as a return airfare, fully equipped and very comfortable private flat, and Chinese language lessons if you want them. Pay is Y3000 per month (three times more than wht any of the local teachers get), that means you can save $150 or $200 US dollars every month. Well, they're looking for one or two people for next semester, although an earlier or slightly later starting date is open to negotiation

Anyway, considering there are so many people in the SAIL orbit who would be good at this sort of thing I'd just thought I'd let you know. If there is anyone at SAIL at the moment who you think might be interesting in such a job you got give them my email address and I would be happy to provide them with more info.'

Michael can be contacted via email.

SAILor seeking a job
One of our longest serving SAIL volunteers (who is also a member of the Sudanese community) is currently occupied as the world's most over-qualified cleaner. If anyone knows of or hears of any teaching, interpreting or community development work that could engage an exceptionally reliable, kind and diligent Sudanese SAILor with English better than our own, please let the SAIL co-ordinators know and we will gladly put you in touch!

THANK YOUSE!
We’ d just like to thank…
All of us at SAIL owe an enormous debt of thanks to volunteer tutor and PR whiz, Sue Hunter. Sue has been putting a tremendous amount of hours into contacting companies to provide SAIL with donations. So far she has had success with Mattel, who gave us board games and Barbies, Staedtler, who gave us stationary, and several publishers. This is definitely the unsexy side of SAIL – spending hours with a phone glued to your ear trying to convince people to not make money from their products. Sue, we are astonished at the results you have turned up in such a short time and thank you profusely for them!

Thanks also go to Rob Craig, who organised free tickets for SAILors to the show ‘People Watching'. Further thanks to Ariana Bourke, for netting SAIL a large amount of McDonalds vouchers. These will be fantastic for anyone embarking on an excursion. Thanks also to Victoria for her lesson plans for new tutors. These are posted on the net in the tutor resources section and we know that they have already been a great help to recently joined SAILors. Thanks for fitting them in around work and kids!

Remember all those pressies you got for your 18th birthday? Well, ex-SAILor Theodora Neave opted instead to have all her birthday guests donate money to SAIL. A pretty impressive gesture from someone still at school and one that is very much appreciated.

Finally we would like to thank Marg, Tom and Poly who assisted in two research projects about the Sudanese community. SAIL was invited to participate in one project looking at Sudanese adult literacy from Coffs Harbour and another looking at the impact of violence on learning from Canada. We were thrilled to be involved in both and thank these people for their participation.

Welcome aboard
We would also like to introduce and welcome aboard a new bevy of SAILors who have decided to work behind the scenes. Christine, the photocopy wizz, Lin, the financial administration guru, Paula, SAILor Tutor and resident shop-a-holic and Marg, SAILor Senior and administrator extraordinaire. We thank these people in anticipation of their ongoing support to the entire SAIL crew!

Bumper edition of Total Trivia - Commonly asked questions
This newsletter's total trivia section is dedicated to some of the questions most often asked of both of us.

Who is it who actually responds to my emails?
Although all emails are signed off by both of us, more often than not, only one of us has written the email. Between ourselves, we have agreed to be bound by what the other says. However, we always ensure that we both read every single outgoing and incoming email in the SAIL account. The only time we truly write an email together is when emails contain very important content or require decisions to be made. In these instances we will discuss our response before we reply. In short, the emails come from both of us, there is no way of knowing who has written it and that's the way we like it! Those who have attempted to guess of late have been humorously wrong :)

Do you get paid for doing SAIL?
Yes, we get exactly the same payment as you- love, good wishes and plenty of hugs. The only difference is we give ourselves a 100% pay increase every week.

Do you do SAIL full time?
We get asked this often and the answer is (officially) no. Both of us study full time at the University of Melbourne, work part time and do work at other not-for-profit organisations. AG also does paid work every week at the Wesley College Preparatory School and at the MLC Holiday Program and has a long list of child care clients. She does occasional voice-overs for radio and television commercials. Matthew works at the Malthouse Theatre (hence the free Playbox tickets), is a private tutor of Mathematics and Japanese and does legal research at the Paris end of Collins Street (and he doesn't even speak French). Matthew also does professional acting jobs whenever someone will employ him. Our full CVs are available on request (joke!)

How do you fit SAIL in?
It's amazing how much time you can find when you love and believe in what you are doing and have a phenomenal group of 180-odd people working towards the same goals.

And finally...
We recently noticed a resounding piece of SAIL trivia. Without wanting to consider people with reference to other people, there is one SAILor, who shall remain nameless, but who has clearly taken out the Best Promoter of SAIL in a social and family setting Award. This person has now successfully roped in all members of her family to the extent that she is now able to claim, in all honesty, that as a result of her promotion at social and family events she has all members of her immediate family through to (this is not a joke!) her sister's ex-boyfriend's, sister's boyfriend! There’s also a chance (and this is not exaggerating either) that their grandfather’s old neighbour’s daughter may soon become a SAILor. We would now like an explanation from each every SAILor at to why their siblings' ex-partner's siblings current partner is not SAILing?! And before anyone asks us for our excuse, we don't need one! Almost every current SAILor is the friend of our respective ex-partners- and that too is the truth (and a very good conundrum!)

Smooth SAILing and thanks for all your efforts,
Matthew and Anna Grace

PS Since we always ask you to let us know when you can't come, it seems only fair that we should let you know the same. I (Matthew) am going to be away from SAIL on July 12, 19 and 26. I am off to New Zealand for a family gathering. I will also be there conducting primary research attempting to determine conclusively if indeed New Zealanders do have two heads. I will inform you of my results on my return!