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.
7. If you have a spare seat in your car, please let us know.

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 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. Second hand toys are always very welcome in SAIL Junior.
3. There is no SAIL Xtend on the listed dates ie no Arabic or short courses.
4. SAIL wraps for 2003 on 20 December 2003. It will resume for a massive 2004 in mid-February!

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!

End of year bonanza
The end of year celebrations this year are going to be huge!
The final SAIL for the year will be 20 December (the last Saturday before Christmas) and, after this, we will have our annual break until mid-February. The final two SAIL's will be events not to be missed. We are keeping the details of each very quiet expect to say that on 13 December it seems likely that we will be hosting a very well-known Australian performer at SAIL. Since this will be such a big event, we are seriously looking at much larger venues for that day only. If you are not able to attend on 13 December we would appreciate it if you could let us know as soon as possible. On the final SAIL for the year a guest who wishes to remain anonymous (but may be a resident of the North Pole) will be dropping by, as is SAIL tradition.

New Worksheets Online
It’s really the tutors, more than anyone else, who know exactly what resources are needed at SAIL. We have recently been very excited to post some new, tutor-designed worksheets on the website. Jane A kindly followed up Michael Carr-Gregg’s amazing bullying lecture with sheets designed to prompt thought and discussion on bullying issues between tutors and volunteers. They are mostly aimed at primary school kids, but there is also a very interesting bullying quiz, which is suitable for older kids as well.

They are online now – so check ‘em out! If these uncover any concerns or problems that your kids are having with bullying at school, please let us know. Caitlin W has also posted a great grammar/sentence construction worksheet. Dylan has made some fantastic reading sheets, which have set the teenage boys world on fire. One is a reading comprehension on Tupac Shakur.

We know there are others out there who have designed their own sheets, in particular SAIL Senior tutors – please send them through to us! We want the online worksheet section to be as chock-full of usefulness as possible.

Newsflash for this Week 5 – 8 November 2003
Week 5 is here – it’s this Saturday and we have something a little different in store!

SAIL Primary and Secondary Tutors and SAIL Junior Helpers
Living Stories – for anyone who skipped over the above section (would you do that?!) the Living Stories improvisational drama group will perform for all SAIL students and SAIL Primary and Secondary Tutors this Saturday! The performance will be at 12.30pm in the hall, right after lunch. Please Note: this is in lieu of a training session/talk for SAIL Primary and Secondary tutors because of the exams which so many of us are amidst at present. The idea is that people will bring their students to join in this performance and give a great stress relief for uni students! The performance group will be listening to people’s stories and then ‘playing them back’ by performing improvised versions of their stories on the spot. We have taken SAILors to see this kind of performance before, and it has proven very popular, with everything from journeys from Sudan to the consequences of sleeping in and being late for Saturday school being acted out!

SAIL Senior Tutors
Kathy Earp will continue with her guidance for those tutoring in SAIL Senior. In response to your requests, we have encouraged her to keep the focus on low-level students who tend to make slow progress. This session will take place in the church itself. Please also encourage your students to attend the Community Talk in the chapel from the AMES language and job searching divisions.

New roles to fill on board the SAIL boat
The following section highlights a number of specific positions that we are currently looking for people to fill. We would prefer to offer them to existing SAILors before we advertise elsewhere! If you have friends, colleagues or loved ones who you think might be interested in any of them, we are keen to hear from them too.

Camp co-ordinator
It is with some regret that we farewell Noah Shaked as our camp coordinator. Noah did a great job on our camps last year, but is unable to help out on the four-day camps we hope to run over summer and possibly in April next year. We are therefore throwing open the door to other SAILors who might be interested in stepping in to fill his shoes. The SAIL Camps hold many of our favorite SAIL-related memories and have been extremely popular with all attendees, Sudanese and non! Coordinators will be backed up on the camps by one or both of us, and a team of volunteer helpers and Sudanese adults. For the most part, the camps run themselves, with everyone involved just relieved to be out of town and in the fresh air. Coordinators need to be able to help us out with finding and booking a venue or venues, and spend some time planning loose activity programs for the four days.

Carpenters
We need cupboards! Since we are fast running out of teaching space, we have decided that custom-made cupboards to fit two SAILors are the way to go. Only joking! If anyone is a skilled or even a rudimentary carpenter and they are able to voluntarily build some cupboards for us in the library we would love to hear from you.

Youth worker/Chaperone
One of our SAILors, Tina Aleu, has been invited to participate in amazing event, the Plan Youth Media Challenge. She is one of 16 ambassadors from as far away as Senegal, Vietnam and India who will be attending a conference from Wednesday 12th – Friday 15th November in the city. These youngsters will spend a day at a radio station or newspaper learning about the way that form of media works, and then spend the next two days among politicians, youth workers and others reporting on youth issues, particularly in the developing world, as they are presented at the conference. This is a truly extraordinary opportunity for Tina, who won the chance as a result of a terrific submission she wrote with her tutor at SAIL. We are looking for a volunteer who might be able to accompany Tina as her guardian for the three days (or at least one of them). It would involve transporting Tina from her home in Sunshine each day and being her guide for the duration of the conference, which runs 8.30 –5pm each day. Plan is able to pay volunteers the $50 per day, petrol, food and conference entry (usually a whopping $390!) will also be covered. This is a great chance for anyone studying development, social work or youth work, especially given that Plan are a major overseas aid agency.

Odd jobs whizz
We are searching for any SAILors, or SAILors nearest and dearest, who might be interested in the position of the SAIL Handyman -or Handywoman - ok, let's just say Handyperson. There are many families in the Sudanese community, particularly those of single mums, who have no way of getting basic home maintenance done. For example, there is currently a waiting list of people who need to have their lawns mown! The burgeoning Sudanese-run settlement centre at St Johns, Father Don's other church, in Footscray, has a lawn mower that can be used but no volunteers to take on the task. We are interested in hearing from anyone who can help out in the lawn mowing area, and also anyone who might be interested in helping out with other little jobs.

MYM Music camp driver
We are also glad to announce that, once again, SAIL has been offered places at the Summer Music School of the Victoria College of the Arts. Last year this provided 8 younger SAILors with the opportunity to learn a musical instrument in a small band at this week-long intensive camp. The music camp next year will take place at the end of January. We are currently searching hopefully for any SAILors who would be willing and able to drive just four SAILors to and from the city on each day of that week so that they can attend. Volunteers could use their own car, or one of our buses. SAIL will cover all petrol expenses. If you, or someone you know, are able to assist us in this way please contact us.

Photographer for Dambai
Dambai are hitting the big time! Poly, SAILor and Dambai manager, is very keen to get some classy promotion photos taken for the purpose of attaining more performances. As they run on an exceedingly small budget and are such dependable supporters of SAIL, we are putting the call out to our networks to ask for a professional photographer to do a half-day shoot with them. If you, or someone you know, would be able to do this in the next month, please let us know. Costs will be gladly reimbursed.

Howdy Pardner - SAIL Partnerships Bloom
It seems everyone is keen to jump on board the SAIL boat which means that we have constantly got new and exciting things happening. Most recently there are new partnerships springing up. These partnerships surround SAIL with people who have the experience to strengthen SAIL immeasurably.

SAIL and Living Stories
Living Stories (sometimes known as ‘Playback Theatre’) is an improvisational storytelling theatre in which audience members tell real-life stories and then watch them acted out on the spot. Playback is used everywhere there are people with stories to tell! Workers from Living Stories are going to be working with a group of SAILors, listening to their stories, acting them out and teaching them to do the same themselves. This will be done during SAIL time with the group of teenage SAILors who worked on the Flow project. We hope that this will give these SAILors a further opportunity to reflect on their journeys to Australia, a safe outlet to express emotions and, given the focus of the Flow project on writing and reading, a chance to think about different methods of communication, i.e. non-verbal and physical.

Living Stories will kick-off with a performance by a large Living Stories group this week, November 8th, as a part of the Week 5 Activities. It is open to everyone, both students and tutors, so we’d love everyone who can stay to bring their students, and their stories along! It’s at 12.30 this Saturday in the Hall.

SAIL and Spirit West
Spirit West Services is the Western Bulldogs training arm; they provide a number of courses and qualifications for adults in the West. They are keen to work in with refugee communities in the area and have approached SAIL about running the Certificate in English Language Literacy through the SAIL Senior program. Tom Burns, a Senior tutor and qualified teacher, and Poly Kiyaga, a senior tutor and member of the Sudanese community have generously agreed to take on this responsibility. We thank the SAILors Senior for the flexibility and willingness to support SAIL through this project.

The idea is to give the Senior program a structure so that once the students have completed 10 weeks of sessions they will have a recognised English qualification. Spirit West will be providing funding to SAIL to enable us to carry out the project successfully. Most Senior tutors have been involved in the meetings and information sessions surrounding this plan. We are now keen to get feedback on what extra SAIL Senior resources we could provide you with in order to see the project successfully completed.

SAIL Home Help and Anglicare
SAIL has made contact with the Anglicare in-home support program in the Western area. Antoinette from Anglicare attended the recent Home Help training day where she met some of the SAILors involved and had an opportunity to understand the kinds of concerns that often come up for Home Helpers. She has generously offered SAIL volunteers the opportunity to attend the training sessions that Anglicare runs for its own workers, free of charge. We are delighted that Home Helpers now have access to this kind of professional support.

Details of the first training session have already come through, it is being run by the Department of Human Services and is on child protection issues, including definitions of child abuse and neglect, identifying and managing risk and determining when to notify to child protection, and mandatory and non mandatory reporting of abuse.

When? 25th November 6.00pm - 8.30pm,11th December 1.30pm - 4.30pm, 29th January 2004 9.30am - 12.30pm, 24th February 2004 6.00pm - 8.30pm
Where? 71 Moreland Street Footscray

SAIL and Hall and Wilcox
We’re delighted that SAIL has been offered pro bono legal representation by the law firm Hall and Wilcox. We have already had one very successful meeting with the firm, in which we thrashed out some of our concerns and worked to ensure that SAIL is providing the best, safest possible service to everyone involved. We thank Tony McVean for his enthusiasm in offering this support to us on an ongoing basis.




Recap on Last Week 5
Last Week 5 was resounding hit. Dr Michael Carr-Gregg showed SAIL tutors exactly why he is renowned internationally as a ‘guru’ when it comes to adolescent mental health issues. He spoke at length about the issue of bullying and answered questions about how we as SAILors can work towards battling the problem. It was a major coup to have him at SAIL for the day given his profile! He was very impressed with SAIL tutors, as all our speakers have been. As noted above, bullying worksheets are now available online to follow-up with your students from this session!

Kathy Earp from AMES continues her great work with the SAIL Senior group. We have had very positive feedback on these sessions. We hope that everyone has enjoyed them!

The SAIL Community Talk was from the Red Cross Tracing Service. They spoke to the Sudanese community about how to go about tracing loved ones who they have lost contact with as a result of the war. We know of one SAILor who has already taken up this offer. If you are aware that your students or their family is unsure of the whereabouts of their friends or family, please let us know and we will pass the Red Cross information along to you and them.

The Melbourne University Dental Hygiene Group spoke to both the SAIL tutors and the Sudanese community. These guys were very enthusiastic and worked so hard to reach all members of the SAIL community (see the related article on their play). We hope that you found their talk useful – we definitely had one tutor admit to us that they felt ‘too guilty’ to give their kids a bag full of icy poles and jelly following it! We have a number of bilingual (Arabic and English) great colouring-in books/stories that back up the dental hygiene message which we would love people to follow up with their students (of all ages!!)

Thanks to Katerina, Week 5 Coordinator, for her continuing great work!

Grade 6, 10, 11 and 12 students
If your student is in any of these year levels, we would like to hear from you! All of these students will be acknowledged for their academic progress at the end of year bash and, while we have most people on records, we would hate to miss someone from the accolades. If your student is in one of these year levels, please let us know!

Plastic bag donations
Yet again we put out the call for all those who have unloved plastic bags stored at home. We promise to provide them with worthy work and excellent conditions. Please if you have old supermarket bags at home bring them in so that the generous bread donations we receive each week can be distributed to those who are most in need. Donated bags should be deposited in the kitchen on any given Saturday.

SAIL About Gets Busy!
Kate Cebrano
It’s been busy at SAILAbout HQ of late. Firstly, huge thanks to Lastari who got us four free tickets to the Kate Ceberano concert. These tickets came at exactly the right time for us, as we had a few SAILors in bad need of some TLC. The show was fantastic, we all marvelled at the beautiful old Athenaeum Theatre and the audience were treated to the stylin’ dance moves of three SAIL kids and one shameless coordinator who led the grooving during the standing ovation.

Hi 5 for the Juniors
If that wasn’t enough, Lastari has also secured us no less than 10 free tickets to the Hi 5 concert! These are the hottest tickets in town, this band is ludicrously popular with the nappy-wearing set. This is a perfect excursion for any SAILors aged under 6, who are all familiar with the band from their TV show. Perhaps some Senior tutors might like to take some mums and their kids? Or some drivers might like to take along the younger members of their car load? The details are thus: Wednesday 12th November. Time: 2pm (so school kids are probably out) Location: Robert Blackwood Hall, Monash University. Please get in touch as soon as you can if you’re interested in this very cool offer!

Roving and SAILing
Once again, SAILors will soon have the opportunity to see Rove Live being filmed. Our thanks to Charlotte George and Corrine Grant for organising this for us again this year! A few things to keep in mind: SAILors attending need to be over 18 – or look it (last time we were able to bend this rule a little ‘cos our SAILors are so vertically impressive). Volunteers interested in taking one or two students would need to check it out early with the parents, as it is quite a late night (on a school night). When: Wednesday November 11. Where: At the Rove Studios in Nunawading What time: Kids need to be picked up from home at 7pm.

A word from the Library
Bridgid, our fabulous librarian, is suffering from uni-induced stress at present, so we are writing this on her behalf! We would like to say goodbye to Leticia, one of the library assistants, who leaves us to return home to the United States. Not only have we lost a great volunteer but also the only person who could reach the top shelves in the library! In her place we welcome Irene to the library team.

We’d like to alert everyone to the new Arabic/English picture dictionaries in the library. These were discovered by Kate Jackson and bought off the ‘net by Sue H, and are proving extremely popular, especially for SAIL Senior tutors. The library also has a new section, ‘Librarians Choice’! It is just to your right as you walk in the door. This has some of the best, most popular children’s books in it, and is a good place to go if you need a great book in a hurry!

Press bonanza
We just wanted to keep everyone in the loop about SAIL in the press from the past and in the next couple of months. SAIL was featured in the local paper and in the community arts newsletter from the Footscray Arts Centre in the last month- both of these are available online already. We have also been fortunate enough to get a feature spread (written by our very own Frances, from the Junior Room) in the old boys and girls magazine of the school we went to as kiddies! On the website you can also find a superb article recently compiled by Swinburne University Journalism Student, Chris Jackson.

Recently Anna Grace was invited to (and did) speak at a Youth Forum on AIDs in Africa and Matthew spoke by invitation to the Year 11s at Loreto Mandeville Hall Girls’ School. Matthew also has a commissioned article appearing in the December edition of Migration Action magazine and we are just finalising our first academic paper to be published (by request note!) in the Australasian and Pacific Journal of African Studies. Keep your eyes peeled for all of these on the website!

Dental Dramas
Thanks go to Will and Farhad from Xtend Drama for all their great work with the Dental Hygienists from Melbourne Uni. About eight young SAILors performed in an extremely funny play about the importance of brushing you teeth. It was performed for high numbers of SAILors of all ages after Xtend. As well as featuring Mayong dressed as a giant tube of toothpaste, Ater as an evil plaque monster, and Ebithal as the protagonist self-named (what else?) ‘Delta Goodream’, the play was actually very good at getting its message across. The kids were then all provided with show bags full of toothpaste, new toothbrushes and other goodies (we still have a few left if your student missed out).

VIP visit
What do President Dubya Bush, President Hu Jintao, Paul Keating and the coordinators of the SAIL Program all have in common? “They are all influential,” we hear you say. “Except Keating, they all want to get more people into space?” While this, too, is true, the real answer is that in the week of 20 October, all enjoyed the presence of the Federal Member for Gellibrand, Shadow Minister for Population and Immigration and Shadow Minister assisting the Leader on the Status of Women, Nicola Roxan MP. Nicola, the member for the region SAIL is in, asked to come for a tour and then did so on 25 October 2003. We were thrilled to have her and she was supremely impressed by the level of activity and warmth she observed as we took her around SAILland. Nicola has generously made herself available for any future events we have and has also offered us a place in her electorate newsletter to promote our activities.

THANK YOUSE!
As many of you would know, there are many SAILors who travel immense distances to Footscray in order to participate in the SAIL experience every week. We have SAILors coming each week from Kilsyth, Mt Eliza, Ringwood and Ocean Grove to name just a few far-flung spots. But recently we have noticed a growing number of instances where people are, believe it or not, travelling to and from interstate to fit in with their SAILing time. On at least five occasions recently, SAILors have arranged flights into and out of Melbourne that allow them to attend SAIL on the Saturday. We are endlessly grateful to these individuals for being so mindful of the importance of their own regularity of attendance at SAIL. It is not our expectation that people adjust their lifestyles this much to allow them to SAIL, but we appreciate the extra effort very much.

We would also like to thank Anne Yang and Farhad for representing SAIL at the Melbourne University Active Uni Day in our absence. It was a superb success and we have recruited many volunteers as a result. Thanks to Anne and Farhad for donating this extra time so enthusiastically!

Yet again, we want to thank Sue Hunter for all the behind-the-scenes work she donates to SAIL. We especially want to thank Sue for all the time and energy she has pumped into getting the Bursary Program off the ground. We are constantly refreshed by her ‘everything-is-doable’ attitude to all things SAIL! Thanks Sue for all your support!

Finally, we’d like to thank tutors Will Crawford and Matt McKenna as well as Natalie B and Louise D. Times have been tough for some members of the community lately, and it’s on these occasions that the kindness and concern of those who go the extra mile is really appreciated. It is a blessing to have you guys backing the community (and us!) so strongly. Thankyou sincerely.

Total Trivia
1. Gilmore College for Girls’ now recognises SAIL as a subject for the purposes of completing the requirements of Years 11 and 12. Two SAILors are currently counting it! How about that then?

2. This first bit is not trivial. For the first time ever, two lots of two SAILors are getting engaged. To Zebedee and Sarah, Katerina and Joel we send our greatest congratulations. It gives us no joy to admit that neither couple met at SAIL. In fact, and we are sincerely upset about this, no couple has ever been formed at SAIL. What’s with that? People, we are putting out the call: get you act together. Open you eyes! Smell the roses! Looking for attractive, intelligent, like-minded partners, look no further than the tutor next to you or across the hall? Why, oh why, has no one “picked up” at SAIL yet? We have meeting with other organisers of similar organizations, who crow about their coupling stats and we are left to hang our heads in shame. Help us!

We have put our brains together on this one and have come up with a couple of possible solutions;
Open the bulletin board up as a “meeting place”. For example, add a matchmaker to the Panel of Experts.
Set up a SAILs singles book club in the library. Then have social gatherings around it!
Have an allocated day where the students are banned and instead of us matching tutors to students, we match …. well…. you get the gist!
Please, if you ever so slightly inclined towards showing interest in another SAILor, let us know. We will be always happy to help. Although, be assured that any progress will form a part of the new section of the SAIL newsletter; “SAIL gossip!”.

Thank you all for your generosity in committing yourself to the enrichment of the lives of others, your generosity of spirit and generosity of time.

For this and your continuing support of the SAIL community our heartfelt thanks!

Matthew and Anna Grace