Happy New Year from the Mission

By Sue Dight - CEO

As we round out another pandemic year, it’s important we recognise the generosity towards the seafarers and the Mission - it has been incredible. 

We are almost at our $100,000 donation target. We managed to reach the Art Show fundraising target through the great support of MSC and our sponsors, donors, artists, and purchasers, we have managed to secure more than $50,000 worth of goods for our seafarers, care packages of which we have been delivering to every ship we can that comes to Melbourne.

Coming up we will be providing each seafarer with a bag of goodies for Christmas. The items have been sourced through Good360, Mars Australia, Rotary, and all our extraordinary Beanies knitters, some of whom are listed on the back page.

We thank the residents of Lexington Gardens and the Docklands Primary School children for their fantastic Christmas cards for the seafarers. We look forward to the assistance of students from Ivanhoe Grammar to help us pack the 1000 bags, provided through donations by City Light Methodist Church, CSL Shipping and Swire Shipping. 

While it looks like we will not be able to welcome seafarers into the Mission until next year, we will continue to serve them from the gangway by providing them with all the care and shopping we have been doing during the last two years. Even without the crews the Mission remains open to everyone as we continue to fundraise by hosting events such as The Pirate Experience, Claymores Christmas, Opera in Docklands, our Sea Shanty nights, and we are open to offer a quiet place for you to have a cuppa with us, spend time in the Chapel, and meet some lovely people.

The garden is looking fantastic thanks to Melbourne Facilities Services who replaced the turf and our volunteer gardener Maureen.  We are looking for a local person who might like to come in once a week to water the indoor plants over summer.  

We wish all our Docklands neighbours and friends a Happy Christmas and look forward to seeing you all soon at the Mission. 

Seafarers get the jab

Thanks to the hard work of Felix and the team at Capsule Pharmacy at Collins Square, three seafarers received their second dose of AZ this month.

In order for these hard working guys to have the opportunity to go home for Christmas and to get on a plane, they needed a second shot.

The Mission to Seafarers co-ordinated the effort and is working hard to ensure that crews are all vaccinated to keep our nations supply chains moving •