The Santos Great Bike Ride is owned by the Rotary Club of Perth and aims to raise funds for the Heart Foundation, St John of God Foundation Horizon House Project and Hope for the Children. Click on the headlines below to find out more about the good work that these worthy charities undertake.
ST JOHN OF GOD FOUNDATION - HORIZON HOUSE PROJECT
The purpose of the Horizon House Project is to support homeless young people on a long-term basis through providing accommodation as well as schooling, employment and training, health needs and life skills through the support of professional permanent live-in carers and on-going counselling.
On any given night in Australia there are more than 32,000 young people that do not have a safe and secure home. These young people do not choose to be homeless.
Homelessness is a lifestyle that includes insecurity and transiency of shelter. There is no simple reason why a young person becomes homeless; far from being an easy way out, homelessness is one of the most stressful experiences a young person can endure. Most homeless young people express intense feelings of isolation, pain and anguish at having to leave their “home” – however inadequate that home may have been.
Young people who have been homeless need counselling, life-skill training and all the advice and support you would expect they would receive in a normal family home. Our Horizon House program looks at each young person’s needs and seeks to ensure that those needs are met in a holistic way.
The outcomes are long term and the young people who go through the program are able to become meaningful members of the community and stand as role models for other youth in seemingly impossible circumstances.
Our Horizon House Project is a very personal, gratifying and tangible project to be associated with. Please call our National Office on [08] 9382 4292 if you would like to become involved.
*Some young people mentioned in this communication choose to change their names for privacy reasons.
Hi my name is Jess, one of the residents that live in Horizon House. It has been good to live here. I have had my ups and downs as well, but the Carer’s have always been there to help me out when I need it. I am the eldest in the house and I get along cool with the other kids that live here. I have learnt a lot of life skills like cleaning, shopping, cooking even learning to budget my money. It is like a big family home. It’s good for kids like me who do not have a family home. It is a good thing and I would like to thank you very much.
My name is Gary and I live at Horizon House. The opportunity to live in this environment is Great and has helped me in many ways. Before coming into Horizon House I was a typical teenager that did not like school and was drawn to trouble because of the fact that I did not have stability. In a matter of three months I have seen a change in myself. I have developed a better school work ethic and a more positive and healthy attitude toward everyday life. If it wasn’t for the help of this organisation and the carers that look after youth like me, I would not have a clue where I would be. The organisation is willing to help you if you are willing to help yourself achieve what you want in life.
My name is Sally. When I came to live at Bendat House I was fighting all the time with my family and I simply could not live there anymore. I was in year 11 at high school and really wanted to graduate. I was afraid in not knowing what was going to happen to me.
After moving in the house, things began to settle down for me. It was easier going to school knowing that things were ok at home. In the end I did graduate and now I work full time.
I have come a long way from the shy person who first moved in. With the help of the carers I have been able to repair the relationships with my family I can honestly say I feel safe and supported in the house and I am so glad I came to live here.
HEART FOUNDATION - Case Study of Simon Blears
Leaving work on the afternoon before the Australia Day long weekend in 2008 Simon Blears started to feel unwell, with a tight chest and what he thought might be indigestion.
Three weeks later he had a triple by-pass operation on his heart after being told by a specialist there was an 80 per cent chance he would die sometime in the next year if he didn’t have the surgery.
Simon, who works in information technology in the mining industry, was aged 46 and the fact he had symptoms of acute heart disease wasn’t the first thing that occurred to him.
“During the half hour drive home I had cold sweats and started to feel clammy, and by the last 10 minutes I really shouldn’t have been driving because I was rushing through lights trying to get home quickly,” Simon says. “I thought maybe something I’d eaten had disagreed with me, and when I got home I rushed into a cold shower as I felt so terrible.”
Then Simon started to feel anxious and nauseous, and about an hour after he had left work he felt pain at the top of his arms.
“At that point something twigged, and I wondered if it was a heart attack,” Simon says.
He turned his computer on and did a search.
“When I got to the Heart Foundation’s site I was going down the list of symptoms going tick, tick, tick, and I realised that’s what it probably was,” he says.
After some hesitation in case he was wrong and would be embarrassed, he rang triple zero and was taken to Royal Perth Hospital by ambulance.
“There was a lot of traffic around and the ambulance was driving normally until the guy doing the monitoring says to the driver ‘Not quick enough, light it up’. I was taken to emergency and looked at within minutes,” Simon says.
A subsequent blood test revealed Simon had had a medium level heart attack. He had an angiogram procedure to insert a couple of stents into the problem arteries but it was found to be more serious and it was decided that he needed a bypass operation.
Because there were no further symptoms, he was sent home after a few days in hospital to prepare for the operation.
A non-smoker, with no family history of heart disease that he knew of, Simon puts his problem down to not enough exercise and a poor diet.
He was told his cholesterol level was double was it should have been, and brought it down to three within four months.
“I’m exercising a lot more and eating good food regularly,” Simon says. “I haven’t had a bag of hot chips for lunch since it happened.”
He says the experience was confronting and it helped having a permanent scar on his chest to remind him of the consequences of not looking after his health.
“A year before that I’d been told I was a candidate for a heart attack, but I only behaved myself for about a month,” Simon says. “This time it was different, and I‘d say to anyone ‘Go for your cholesterol checks and listen to your GP’.”
HOPE FOR CHILDREN - Ermias Gift
Ermias celebrated his 7th birthday 6 months late this year. His mother didn’t think he was going to live and he was too sick for any kind of celebration in December 2007.
May 2008 was a different story as you can see by this picture of Ermias at his 7th birthday party.
Ermias was born with 2 “pelvic kidneys” that didn’t drain properly. This rare condition was combined with 2 deadly obstructed ureters, resulting in 7 years of kidney infections, chronic pain and resultant malnutrition. In October 2008, when Sara Franklyn and Veronica Culllity, Hope for Children volunteers from Perth, visited Ermias, it was generally accepted he was terminally ill. Unwilling to accept this fate, Hope for Children contacted surgeons in Perth to see if there was something that could be done.
Paediatric Urologist, Andrew Barker, bravely accepted the challenge of operating on Ermias with very little forward briefing information. Ermias had an abdomen that looked like a patchwork quilt; it had been dissected on several occasions, once without an anaesethetic.
He had 2 bags protruding directly out of his stomach, providing drainage to the struggling kidneys. One bag was accidentally pulled out in November, leaving one kidney very bloated, with no adequate means of drainage.
Three tense months followed while Kristin White in Ethiopia and Sara Franklyn in Perth struggled to obtain an emergency medical visa for Ermias. On February 16th it arrived. On February 17th, Ermias left Addis Ababa, fortuitously accompanied by Alexandra Readhead (who was one of his “Foranji” favourites) arriving in Perth to a crowd of welcoming strangers. Ermias then underwent 2 weeks of extensive radiological and pathological testing, prior to surgery on 2 March 2008. SKG Radiology, St Johns Pathology and St John of God Hospital, and the doctors and nurses involved in Ermias’s care, all provided their services free of charge, while fundraising proceeds from 2007 The Santos Great Bike Ride helped fund Ermias’s travel expenses.
Constantly followed by Channel 9 news, Ermias made a remarkable recovery and was fit enough to attend St Kierin’s Pre-Primary in Tuart Hill for a few weeks following the surgery. While at school Ermias enjoyed living with the Harrison family, who have an adopted 5 year old, Solomon. He quickly became part of the family, holidaying in the Southwest, catching fish and experiencing many ocean activities for the first time. Ermias’s sponsors, Andrew King and his two boys, were lucky enough to meet and connect with their sponsored child. The local Ethiopian community also embraced Ermias and his social calendar became quite hectic. After 3 months, with his visa due to expire and his recovery complete, Sara Franklyn accompanied Ermias back to Addis Ababa.
While in Perth, Ermias had become conversant in English and thrived on the education he had previously been denied through illness. Arriving to a throng of well-wishers, everyone was surprised to hear him only speak English; he was refusing/unable to speak Amharic! His mother, who is only Amharic speaking, was happy to report that within days he was back to normal.
Ermias was welcomed home with many celebrations - from the Kindy children to the graduating Scouts and the entire HFC office staff. Even though Ermias has been thrust back into his normal life everything is different for both him and the people who cared for him. His eyes have been opened to life in the affluent world and our eyes to the difficulties of his world. Ermias’s gift to everyone at Hope for Children is the reminder that miracles do sometimes happen. When everyone has given up hope, it is not always hopeless.
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On behalf of Jacqui Gilmour and everyone at Hope for Children we would like to say a few words to the entire team of supporters who have touched many lives through this experience. You have trusted the instincts of your heart and gut and smiled in the face of pressure. All of you have been courageous. Courage is finding the inner strength and bravery required when confronting danger, difficulty or opposition. Courage is the energy current behind all great actions and the spark that ignites the initial baby steps of growth. It resides deep within each of us, ready to be accessed in those moments when you need to forge ahead or break through seemingly insurmountable barriers. It is the intangible force that propels you forward on your journey. Go forward and be passionate about life and what you believe in and thank you for your ongoing support. |
We are currently planning and raising funds for some exciting new projects that we want to tell you about.
BUILDING A COMMUNITY SCHOOL
In 2008 we plan to commence building a community school in Addis Ababa. Our school will educate poor, high potential children using Western and Ethiopian best practices to enable them to grow into self-sufficient adults who will become the future leaders of their community and country. The school will actively involve parents and the wider community in the education of the children and provide a positive model for Ethiopian teachers and parents on how to best educate children without using violence and abuse. The school will also be used to run programs to benefit the wider community, such as classes in adult literacy, basic business, sexual health and parenting skills.
THE YOUTH RESTAURANT AND VOCATIONAL TRAINING
With youth unemployment around 67%, one of the biggest challenges for young disadvantaged Ethiopians is finding safe employment. We have identified the emerging and vibrant hospitality and tourism industries as offering great potential to secure safe and stable employment. With this in mind, Hope for Children plans to expand its vocational training program by establishing a restaurant in Addis Ababa to be used as a hospitality training facility. The restaurant will provide a dynamic and positive environment for disadvantaged youth to learn essential skills for the workplace as well as an opportunity for the growing number of international tourists to interact with the young people and support an enterprise-based solution to ending their poverty. We also intend to expand our existing vocational training program to offer more young people the opportunity to gain skills to help them find meaningful work.
EXPANDED SEXUAL HEALTH PROGRAM
As already mentioned, we received an overwhelmingly positive response to the Lets Talk About Sex workshops. We are seeking funds to continue this potentially life-saving program.
