By Caroline Smith
A festival featuring cuisine from around the world became a touchstone of community engagement for members of Rockingham’s Our Lady of Lourdes Parish and families from Star of the Sea Catholic Primary School last month.
Held on Sunday, 16 October on the school grounds, the event brought together more than 600 people and included 15 different food stalls as well as musical and acrobatic performances from the students.
Rockingham Parish hosted a similar event last year, but this time around they decided to include the primary school and invited Star of the Sea’s P&F to help the parish council organise the event.
Organiser Natalie Boyd said the goal of the festival was to bring people together.
“Last year, the event just involved the parish and it had 300 people, although we expected about 100,” she said.
“This year, we expected 500, but got many more.
“It was great to have so many people from both the parish and the school attending – building those connections was really lovely.”
Another parish organiser, Rebecca Svilicic, said the idea for such an event had begun last year, when two new priests arrived at the parish.
“Last year’s event was something that Father Vijay (D’Souza) and Fr Pierluigi (Vajra) wanted – it was their first year with us, and they wanted to organise a parish and community building event,” she said.
“We thought to extend it to the school this year, because we’re fundraising for a PA system that the school will also be using for its assemblies.
“It was a great icebreaker for members of the two communities – there were a lot of discussions going on between the two.”
Entry to the event was free, and funds were raised through a raffle with donated prizes. During the festival, Rockingham Parish announced the names of children and young people who had been selected as winners in a colouring competition run by the Archdiocesan Safeguarding Project.
The Safeguarding Project ran the competition for Child Protection Week from 5 to 11 September, with children and young people from around the Archdiocese invited to take part. Winners from Rockingham Parish included Maddison Billows in the Years 3-4 category, Jack Billows in the Year 1-2 group, Kindy-Pre Primary category winner Iva Marija Topic, Year 5-6 winner Antonio Dirusso, and winner of the Teenager category Jessica Harris.