By Roger O’Halloran
I picked up the phone on Friday to a parish secretary who was asking if the notice we had for their bulletin was correct. “Readers may believe someone has made a typo”. The tag line reads:
“ Supporting Sustainable International Development Love”
I couldn’t be happier with the way Palms has developed a most professional approach to International Development, building Sustainability based in Solidarity and Justice. The point of striking through the word “Development” and replacing it with “Love” is to highlight the way we do international development. Program participants sharing their lives in situ to achieve effective development outcomes, is an act of LOVE: an act of Agape. Love not as a feeling, but as action, without expecting anything in return.
This love is more than patronising charity from those who have access to an abundance of resources from which they share a little. Sustainable love requires more. It requires giving oneself. Entering into solidarity requires being with and learning from those with whom we seek solidarity.
Agape requires humility. Program participants capacity to achieve it requires their commitment to considerable preparation. Since 1961 Palms preparation has been developed to provide the most comprehensive preparation for humble intercultural engagement.
Drawing on this expertise enables us now to offer an important training program to support development love that inspires connection and growth in Australian communities. We’ve called it Neighbours Without Borders (NWB) because we know that reaching beyond the artificial borders between people awakens exhilarating community growth. The focus of the program is inclusive community development to enable community groups; schools; churches; clubs and LGA’s to remove the deep divisions we see emerging in socio-political affairs.
We are offering a free seminar to anyone interested to:
- Ascertain how to engage your whole community in achieving the full potential of its vision and mission, and
- Analyse the next steps to grow an authentically inclusive community.