Young Journalist Award 2006 Senior Division Runner up

Simple plan, incredible purpose

Louise Wruck, All Hallows' School, Brisbane, Qld.

Close your eyes and envision your life.

Not too shabby? Now close your eyes and envision your life without a family, without employment, without a bank account and without a home. You have just become one of the thousands of homeless who struggle to survive on the streets of Australia.

Fortunately, there are some who see the homeless differently. There are people, although they are few, who know the homeless are not worthless, unintelligent, or even very different to ourselves. The members of St Joseph’s College are clearly part of this category.

The Catholic all-boys high school situated on Gregory Terrace runs a community outreach program called the Eddie’s Van, after their founding Christian Brother Edmund Rice. The man responsible for the coordination of the van is Mr Damien Price, the Dean of Mission at Terrace.

When I asked Mr Price why the van was formed, he quoted a saying: ‘conversion only happens in a relationship.’ In other words, a genuine relationship with the poor is the only way to effect positive change within the community.

Of a Monday morning, a Tuesday night, and every other working day of the week, the Eddie’s Van is loaded with food and donated clothing by the Terrace volunteers and driven to particular locations around the CBD of Brisbane.

From Wickham Terrace to the Botanical Gardens to Kangaroo Point, it meets with the most disadvantaged section of Australian society: the homeless. It offers aid to those who live on the streets, under bridges, in squats and in boarding houses; those who suffer mental illness as a result of drugs or alcohol; those who’ve run away from home and have nowhere to go.

The volunteers bring aid to an average of thirty people every time the Eddie’s Van ventures out of the gates of Terrace. It is their hard work—the teachers, parents and students of Terrace—that makes the program possible. They give up countless hours of their time to the homeless of Brisbane, ensuring that they have somewhere to turn.

The prospect of young Johnny, hair gelled up into spikes with earphones dangling from his pocket, eyelids drooping from a long night of tapping away at the controller of the latest video game, offering comfort to the poor and destitute seems a surprising one, but Mr Price says they never have a shortage of volunteers. In fact, they actually have more volunteers than they can use.

‘Boys love that kind of thing—it’s kind of fair dinkum, you know?’ he said. ‘The fact that they want to do it indicates that they see it as important for them.’

When I asked Damien if the van provides any services other than food and clothing, he replied that the main thing is ‘building a sense of community, a sense of family and a sense of being safe.’ He went on to explain to me that the food isn’t really that important, that if they need food they can go to a homeless shelter. The main service that is provided by the volunteers is simply talking to the homeless. Their aim is to ensure that these people feel that they are worth spending time with and worth listening to.

I was touched by the directions Mr Price gives to the volunteers. ‘We want you to spread out and we want you to do what we believe Jesus did. Jesus met people and he came into their sacred space … that presence said to the person: You are beautiful. You are special. You are loveable.’

Most moving of all were Mr Price’s final comments. ‘They treat me as me and labels don’t mean anything. You get out there, and you’ve got the eggs and the sausages and the homeless guys around and you feel a sense of community. For that hour of the day you don’t have to play a particular role, you just have to be you.’