With glory round her shed

To St Mary’s this morning which is in St Mary (funnily enough) South Adelaide just to be confusing. It is the third oldest church in South Australia I think. It was funny because it was the same age as my churches back in England. Funny to think of the church making it to Australia at the same time as it made it to Mytholmroyd.
St Mary’s was on the main road south of Adelaide and surrounded by a tiny graveyard peppered with ancient and modern former residents of the parish. After receiving communion I was taken round the back to their project.
Fifteen years ago the parish had decided that it should stop looking inwards and start looking outwards, using what they had: buildings and a few people. The first step was they rented a shop on the main street and opened it as a kind of community café. The difference being that the food and drink was free. As part of the shop there was what they call an op shop or we would call a second hand shop.
Two years in and the shop was too successful and so they decided to risk it and move into the church hall, thinking it might put people off. The opposite happened and the Picket Fence Community Centre was born and grew rapidly gathering a clientele from about a 10K radius with its centre bus. Using a mixture of parish investment in people and grant aid for equipment from two local town councils they began to reach some of the most vulnerable in society, with food and advice shops and art classes.
In time they came up with the idea of The Shed Project which converted an outhouse on their land into a workshop. This had tools and benches which was offered to anyone who wanted to use them with supervision. Today a much bigger shed attracts four groups of men:
1. The volunteers; mostly retired people who in return for retiring at sixty have to do fifteen hours community service.
2. Work for Dole people; like the ones in the previous Anglicare schemes who have to demonstrate a willingness to work by working.
3. Young disaffected school drop outs who mostly in the school holidays drop in to learn a craft. I think there were some apprentices there as well
4. Local residents who are working on a project.
There was a great sense of togetherness between the men and quite a lot of self policing of their three rules: no swearing, no drinking, and no being annoying. Whilst I was there they were already planning extensions to the workshop and hall which the shed men were going to do themselves.
Other partnerships now on board includes an emergency food bank, the biggest op shop I’ve ever seen, tax advisers, and now Anglicare is coming in as a partner… they say they have reached the limit of their abilities… but I doubt it.
This organic growth of a community group reminds me so much of what I saw NGO’s doing in Yemen.
Incidentally they have funded all this by using the value of their land… from which they get £60,000 a year rental. A bit more than the £52 a year we get off our tennis courts.
Tonight the family I’m with and I were sharing action songs… they have some great ones by a man called Michael Mangan that I need to look up when I get home. www.butterflymusic.com.au