All Centacare employees have been working under COVID-19 restrictions and we have had to rethink and design new alternatives for engagement with our communities.
One of the programs run by our Community Development team is the Boys Group. The group usually meets weekly at Trinity Bay State School, but due to the recent restriction during this significant period and because the children were not physically attending school, we have been able to meet face to face.
We have developed a great relationships we the boys so we knew they would be missing the weekly group meetings just as much as we were so, we came up with the idea of creating a closed Facebook Group: the Centacare Boys Group; with the group allowed us to continue to stay in touch and support each other during lockdown and has grew quickly to include over 40 participants in the first few days. The boys are very passionate about music and sport which are the key recurrent areas of conversation.
Recently, we set an online soccer challenge which required the boys to make a short video of themselves juggling a soccer ball then upload it to the group page. Soon after the challenge was created the boys started contacting us saying, “but mister, we don’t have a soccer ball.” Without hesitation, Mr Wayne Wood Principal of St Mary’s Catholic College and his PE team donated 17 soccer balls! You can imagine the smiles on the families faces when we pulled up and started passing soccer balls over their fences.
There was a total of 28 entries to the soccer challenge with families playing together, virtual soccer actions and also emulating the greatest soccer players from around the world. The winners were called last Friday. It was a difficult choice but two outstanding winners were declared and each became the recipients of a pizza delivered to their front yard. The winners immediately posted videos about receiving the pizza and of course their traditional dance of celebration.
You can contact Centacare Multicultural Services by calling (07) 4242 1058 or by email to [email protected].
