NSW Christian community serving Tassie’s vulnerable

A group of students and leaders from a rural NSW Christian community has served Loaves and Fishes and two other Clarence Plains-based organisations as part of a work and sightseeing trip to Tasmania.

The team from the Danthonia Bruderhof Community in Inverell painted fences at Mission Australia units in Clarendon Vale, worked in the community garden across the road at Clarendon Vale Neighbourhood Centre, and helped at the Loaves and Fishes-managed kitchen at North Hobart’s Bethlehem House, a St Vincent de Paul residential facility for men transitioning out of homelessness.

School Food Matters provided lunch at Clarendon Vale for the workers there.

The six group leaders and 16 students from Years 9 to 12 spent a week in the Apple Isle in early March as a result of a partnership between the Danthonia community and Mission Australia.

Danthonia is home to 200 people who live, work, study and worship together within the community which also includes the manufacturing facility and offices of Danthonia Designs, producing hand carved, sculpted, and LED digital signs.

In the past two decades, the group has planted more than 100,000 trees and collaborated with neighbouring churches and community groups on various service projects.

Loaves and Fishes Tasmania General Manager, Aaron Kropf, said the enormous cooperation between Clarence Plains-based organisations and individuals who form the One Community Together Collective meant the interstate visitors could be involved in several local projects which directly benefit Tasmanians.

“It’s just another example of the benefit of establishing our southern headquarters at the Grace Centre at Rokeby which also serves as the home of One Community Together,” he said.

“The level of cooperation and commitment to community partnerships makes it easy to get things done.”

By Paul O’Rourke