Pilgrim Uniting Church, Doncaster Vic.

OUR VISION:

Work toward the creation of a more whole society – reconciled and renewed – through meeting human needs, and healing the hurts caused by separation, injustice, oppression and disadvantage.
 

OUR GOAL:

To seek and provide opportunities to involve Pilgrim and share God’s grace with the wider community and to raise awareness and promote a response to particular local and global needs.
 

OUR PRIORITY GOAL 2005-8:

To offer opportunities to address the needs of people in our local area, especially those on the margins.

We, as Pilgrim Uniting Church Doncaster, provide outreach and justice support which is limited by our corporate resources.

In listing the specific corporate Pilgrim mission areas and initiatives below, we also acknowledge that, as a valid expression of  Pilgrim's Outreach and Justice vision and goals, in these and many other compatible areas, many Pilgrim members are working individually and with organisations to achieve our Outreach and Justice vision and goals. Where it is sought by our members, Pilgrim responds with support which therefore extends beyond those areas and initiatives which we name specifically.

 

Local Manningham Area

Retirement Villages, Hospitals & Nursing Homes
Pilgrim provides support to Melaleuca Lodge and Roseville Apartments through regular worship opportunities offered by our ministry team. Our Westcare Ladies Group makes gifts, such as flower posies, for patients in the Donvale Rehabilitation Hospital. The Westcare Group also combined with friends from Roseville Apartments to make a large number of clothing items for AIDS affected babies overseas. At Christmas, our Focus Group visits Roseville Apartments for an evening of shared entertainment. As their outreach project for 2008, the Pilgrim Patchworkers Group has made knee quilts for Pilgrim members who are now in aged care facilities (Click to see pictures of knee quilts). 

School Chaplaincy
Pilgrim continues to assist funding of the well-established Access Ministries' Chaplaincy at Templestowe College and the new Access Ministries' Chaplaincy at Doncaster College.
 

UnitingCare Pancake Day
Pancake Day is an initiative of UnitingCare - a community support agency of the Uniting Church. Pilgrim has participated in this event for the past six years. In 2010, we held a Pancake Day Tea at the Pilgrim Church Centre. This event aimed to increase awareness of the work of UnitingCare as well as to raise funds in support of people doing it tough in the local community.

Click to see pictures of our Pancake Day Tea at Pilgrim on 16 February 2010

Doncare
At Christmas, Pilgrim collects food items for distribution by the community services agency, Doncare, to struggling members of the Manningham community. Pilgrim members also assist in the packing of Christmas hampers.
 

Manningham Inter-Faith Network
The Manningham Inter-Faith Network is a bringing together of people from the Baha’i, Buddhist, Christian, Hindu, Islamic, Jewish and Sikh faith traditions in the City of Manningham to promote respect, harmony and the understanding of each other’s beliefs and to live together in peace and goodwill.  The Pilgrim congregation supports this initiative.
 

LinC Manningham
Pilgrim continues to support LinC Manningham's Christian volunteer outreach program with an annual donation towards administration and Christmas food gifts.  LinC works closely with government-funded agencies filling gaps in services when the agencies are unable to assist.

Reconciliation Manningham
Several members of the Pilgrim congregation are members of Reconciliation Manningham. Pilgrim supports Reconciliation Manningham with a donation towards indigenous education programs in local schools and the community.

Bushfire Relief
The Pilgrim Patchworkers Group have crafted a number of quilts for young people affected by the bushfires that ravaged Victoria early in 2009. Click to see more pictures of the quilts.

Melbourne Metropolitan & Regional Victoria

 

Woomelang Uniting Church Partnership
Pilgrim has a special partnership with Woomelang Uniting Church in the Mallee. Click for details of our partnership with Woomelang
 

Hotham Mission Asylum Seeker Project
Pilgrim supports the Hotham Mission Asylum Seeker Project through an annual donation and a Christmas gift collection.

Indigenous Hospitality House
Pilgrim supports the Church of All Nations Indigenous Hospitality House in Carlton with an annual donation. The House provides temporary accommodation for indigenous families from the country when they are visiting another family member in hospital.
 

Prison Fellowship Australia-Victoria
Several Pilgrim members baked biscuits at Easter in support of a Prison Fellowship initiative to bring the importance of Easter and its world-changing Christian origin to inmates through the gift of a packet of biscuits and a card.
 

Siev X National Memorial

In October 2001, the Siev X refugee boat sank in international waters on its way to Australia. Three hundred and fifty-three people drowned, the majority of them women and children.

Pilgrim participated in this project by painting a pole that was sent to Canberra to form part of the memorial event on 15 October 2006. We also painted three additional poles that were placed in the Pilgrim Church grounds. A short service of dedication of these poles took place on 8 October 2006. Click to see our SievX project pictures

In  2007, the 6th anniversary of the Siev X tragedy, permission to erect the Siev X National Memorial for six weeks at Weston Park, Yarralumla, was granted by the ACT Government, and the Federal National Capital Authority.  As of 1 September 2008, the Memorial in Weston Park was still standing (click to see Siev X Memorial pictures).

For more information and pictures of the Siev X National Memorial visit www.sievxmemorial.com
 

Habitat For Humanity International (including Australia)

Habitat is a non-profit, non-denominational Christian housing ministry that seeks to eliminate poverty, housing and homelessness from the world and make decent shelter a matter of conscience and action.

The current Australian building programme includes housing for families forced into the "poverty trap" through lack of income, jobs and opportunities, in all states, and rebuilding for the recent bushfire victims.

Pilgrim supported Habitat for Humanity in its 2009 Lenten Appeal.

For further information go to http://www.habitat.org

Overseas

Christmas Bowl
Pilgrim is a keen supporter of the National Council of Churches in Australia's (act for peace) Christmas Bowl Appeal which provides emergency assistance, injustice response and development and poverty reduction programs to disadvantaged people in Africa, the Middle East, Asia, the Pacific and Australia.

 

Uniting World Mobile Health Program in Papua New Guinea

Papua New Guinea is the largest developing country in the South Pacific region yet its population has only limited primary health care. Infectious diseases are claiming many lives, and there are serious public health risks such as malaria and HIV/AIDS.

Uniting World's (formerly Uniting Church Overseas Aid) mobile health program provides care to poor rural residents who would otherwise go undiagnosed and untreated because of the inhibitive cost of travel to clinics. Pilgrim supported this program in its 2009 Lenten Appeal.

For more information go to http://www.uim.uca.org.au
 

SAMMY Stamps
Our Westcare Ladies Group collect and prepare used stamps as part of the Uniting Church Adult Christian Fellowship's SAMMY Stamp program that raises funds for local, national and overseas humanitarian projects.
 

Micah Challenge
Pilgrim supports the Micah Challenge - a global Christian campaign which aims to deepen our understanding of justice issues and our engagement with the poor as an integral part of our faith. The campaign works with the largely secular Make Poverty History campaign to make poverty history by encouraging our leaders to halve global poverty by 2015 through achieving the United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDG's).

For more on the Micah Challenge go to http://www.micahchallenge.org.au

For more information on the Make Poverty History campaign go to http://www.makepovertyhistory.com.au/home.html
 

Fair Trade
Pilgrim supports fair trade by ordering Fairtrade tea, coffee and other products for church kitchen use and for sale to congregational members.
 

Vanuatu Eye Project
Pilgrim supports the Uniting World and Rotary Vanuatu Eye Project by collecting used spectacles for recycling.
 

East Timor Community Development
In its 2007 and 2008 Lenten Appeals, Pilgrim has supported a community development project of the Protestant Church of East Timor, one of the Uniting Church’s partner churches. By providing struggling communities with health care services and economic opportunities through agriculture and microcredit this project is giving families a new sense of financial stability and independence.
 

Knitted jumpers
ready to go

Children in Malawi with their new jumpers