Performing for peace: students raise awareness and $3,000 for Caritas

On Thursday 18 July, students from the Academy of Mary Immaculate in Fitzroy, hosted the ‘Perform for Peace’ concert and fundraiser, raising $3,000 for Caritas Australia and demonstrating that each of us is capable of making a difference, no matter how overwhelming a problem might seem.

College captains Sinitta McCarthy and Leah Freeman were moved by the images of global conflict and suffering they were seeing on their television screens. As 17-year-olds living far from the conflict zones, they weren’t sure what they could do to help. But for Leah and Sinitta, doing nothing wasn’t an option. ‘Even if it’s a small thing, what’s the thing we could do that helps make an impact?’ they asked.

‘Leah and I were just chatting about it at the start of the year, and obviously we were seeing a lot of things on the news—a lot of victims of war and people who are struggling right now—and we just said, we want to do something,’ Sinitta says.

After some research, they decided that perhaps the best approach would be to raise funds to donate to a reputable aid agency.

‘I know a little bit makes a big difference, but we really want to make the most change that we can,’ Sinitta says. ‘So we went to Sr Mary, our principal, and we said we’ve got this idea of a performance night.’

Recalling that early conversation, principal Sr Mary Moloney RSM says, ‘We were starting to talk about what can we do in this sad world of ours. We were conscious of Gaza, conscious of Ukraine, and together we came up with the idea for the event.’ Rather than concentrate on just one conflict or area, she says, they decided to ‘concentrate on peace in the world’ by hosting a ‘Perform for Peace’ concert.

Sr Mary says she is ‘very, very, very proud of the girls’, who coordinated ‘every single aspect’ of the evening, ‘from organising the guest speaker and doing the invitations to putting the program together’.

Obviously, there’s only so much you hear through the news. We wanted people to hear stories through people who’ve experienced and worked in these war zones.

The planning process was lengthy, Leah says, as they rounded up performers and speakers, organised the tickets and publicity, and contacted people and businesses within the academy community to donate prizes for the raffle and silent auction. They were ‘just flooded with so much support from everyone, all these institutions and organisations’, she says.

The college had worked with Caritas before, including hosting the 2024 Project Compassion launch, so when they contacted Gwen Michener, a community engagement animator with Caritas Australia, she was ‘super enthusiastic’ about the idea, Leah says.

Sinitta says that the process of finding their special guest speaker, humanitarian Moira Kelly AO, was also a case of everything falling into place. She came across Moira’s name as she was researching potential speakers, and ‘from her description, she was amazing. I’d seen her work and heard of her before, and I found out once I spoke to Sr Mary that her daughter goes to this school. So that was all just one big coincidence,’ Sinitta says. ‘The change that she was making is the change that we want to make.’

Leah explains that as well as raising money, they also wanted to raise awareness. ‘We wanted everyone else to hear her story. Obviously, there’s only so much you hear through the news. We wanted people to hear stories through people who’ve experienced and worked in these war zones.’

Each year, the college’s senior leadership team chooses a theme for the year. This year, it is ‘Stronger Together’. ‘I guess this whole event links back to that theme,’ Sinitta says. ‘Many voices can make a really big impact.’

She explains that ‘Mercy values’ have been emphasised throughout their schooling. ‘Growing up with that mindset, it’s always so important to give back.’

Leah agrees, saying that as part of the leadership team, ‘We’re lucky enough to be in this position; we should do something with it. We need to actually take opportunities and try to make a change while we can.’

The students invited Ms Michener to give those attending the event a ‘quick introduction’ to the work of Catholic humanitarian aid and development agency Caritas Australia. Working in 36 countries across Asia, Africa, the Middle East and the Pacific, as well as with First Nations communities in Australia, the organisation forms part of Caritas Internationalis, one of the largest humanitarian networks in the world, with 162 member organisations and programs in 200 countries.

We are deeply grateful for events such as this, and your donation to someone that you have never met is true compassion in action.

‘Sadly, our world is in crisis,’ Ms Mitchener said. ‘We are seeing intense and complex conflicts causing the mass displacement of people.’

Famine and conflict in Sudan, for example, have left 24.7 million people, including 14 million children, in need of aid and protection assistance. In Bangladesh, more than a million Rohingya people live in the largest refugee camp in the world, where Caritas assists 147,000 refugees. With the Ukraine war entering ‘its third brutal year’, displacing almost 10 million people, Ms Mitchener said Caritas helps to provides people with water, food, clothes, hygiene kits, medicine, somewhere to live and education for their children. Similarly, in Gaza, where 2.2 million people have been displaced and 87,000 injured, and where 96 per cent of people face high food insecurity, Caritas—as one of only three agencies on the ground in the north of Gaza—has already delivered 705,000 food parcels and provided emergency shelter to 1,200 displaced people.

‘So last year alone, we were able to reach 1.5 million people across 36 countries by walking together in our mission to uphold dignity and promote justice’, Ms Michener said. ‘We are deeply grateful for events such as this, and your donation to someone that you have never met is true compassion in action.’

Young Mercy Links Victoria also contributed to the evening’s success. A ‘post-high-school initiative’, the group is made up mostly of graduates from Mercy schools and offers a way for young people to connect with others ‘with a heart for mercy’. As well as providing opportunities to advocate for justice issues and volunteer with vulnerable peoples in the community, it runs annual retreats and local and international immersion opportunities.

Guests at the ‘Perform for Peace’ event were able to chat with Young Mercy Links members about their work during the interval, and two members even contributed to the evening’s entertainment, with Jessica Luna singing ‘Enlightenment’ by Matt Dahan and Kelly Lynne D’Angelo, and Zoe Hamilton performing ‘Peace’ by Anna Golding.

Other performances on the night included an upbeat dance number by the Academy African Dance Ensemble and a beautiful rendition of Pachelbel’s ‘Canon’ by the AMICCI chamber choir, conducted by Mirelle Morris, which fittingly featured the lyrics ‘Dona nobis pacem’, Latin for ‘Give us peace’.

An undoubted highlight of the evening, though, was hearing from special guest speaker Moira Kelly, founder and director of the Creating Hope Foundation, and Victorian of the Year in 2013.

There’s a wonderful word called hope and I do believe it’s the only reason we all get up in the morning.

In a wide-ranging and engaging conversation with Sinitta and Leah, Ms Kelly told stories about her experiences working for aid agencies around the world, as well as in organisations she has set up herself to care for children in crisis. Inspired by her childhood hero, St Teresa of Kolkata—with whom she later worked in India—Ms Kelly has cared for crack-addicted babies in the Bronx, helped children in India and Africa, run an orphanage for children with AIDS in Romania, and helped to keep children out of the firing line during the Balkans War.

She has also organised for injured and disabled children from developing countries and conflict zones around the world to receive life-changing surgery and medical treatment in Australia, the United States and Ireland. Among those she’s helped are her own adopted children, Iraqi-born brothers Emmanuel and Ahmed Kelly (one a globally recognised singer and actor, and the other a Paralympic swimmer), and Bangladeshi-born twins Trishna and Krishna Kelly, who were cranially conjoined at birth before being separated by surgeons in Melbourne.

Speaking of what motivates her to keep going, she said, ‘There’s a wonderful word called hope and I do believe it’s the only reason we all get up in the morning.’

When confronted with suffering, she believes it’s important to keep responding in whatever way you can. ‘Here we are with Ukraine and Gaza, and it is very frustrating not to know what to do. But rather than do nothing at all, you’re doing something. You can’t get over there and hug the kids and get them all through, but you can raise something and know you’ve done something.’

When images of suffering in distant places flash up on our TV screens, she said, it’s important to remember ‘There’s a real world there, with real people just like us.’