By Anthony Barich
THE Palms Global Mission Programme is celebrating its 50th anniversary with a renewed push to encourage lay people to help Catholic hospitals, schools and Bishops in the neediest parts of the world.
Palms held information sessions on 16 and 17 April in Perth and Fremantle but the organisation says interested people involved in teaching, health, admin, agriculture/farming, trades and other professional or technical areas can still make themselves available for a one-year trip starting in July.
While Palms has received many requests from Bishops around the globe for help in healthcare and education, Palms has so far confirmed that volunteers will be sent to East Timor, Papua New Guinea, Ethiopia, Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania.
Anyone with training or skills that may be useful is encouraged to apply, but Palms is not looking for people to do unskilled labour, leaving that for the industry of local people. Palms mainly needs physiotherapists, trades people, IT specialists, social workers and workers in community development.
Successful volunteers will attend a 2-10 July orientation course advising need-to-know information on working in other countries relating, for example, to healthcare, how to build and maintain positive relationships, working across cultures and how to immerse oneself in a foreign community.
Palms assistant director Brendan Joyce, who joined the agency after a two-year stint in Papua New Guinea as a teacher with Palms, said volunteers “do not arrive and tell people how to do things and just fix their problems.”
His classroom in Bougainville in Papua New Guinea – which was an Australian territory until it became part of an independent PNG in 1975 – consisted of civil war combatants aged 15-35.
“A missionary, or volunteer, must become part of the community so it can develop; this way they can get something out of the experience also,” Mr Joyce told The Record during a trip to Perth last week.
“They must also work on development and put things in place so that what they do continues to have an effect on the community long after they have left.”
Mr Joyce accepted a two-year missionary stint in Bougainville aged 25 while a teacher at a Mercy Sisters Catholic High School in Melbourne and returned to Palms to work fulltime in Sydney.
People interested should contact Palms soon, he said, as health checks, police clearances and visas take time to organise.
Phone 02 9518 9551 or email Brendan@palms.org.au.