The
Catholic Weekly
Online

Sydney
7 December 2003

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Sydney bids for World Youth Day

Biggest rally of young people

Principals rang bells of change in schools

Abandoned by her dad, Dina finds a caring home in a village of poverty

A new St Pat’s: the wait is over

A diary that caters for Catholic needs

Help for newcomers

Caritas emergency food aid to E Timor

Survival guide

How to help the refugees

Evening group

Editorial: Boost for youth

Letters: Wonderful memories

Conversation: Ted Collins, Bishop of Darwin - Souls to be saved, not locked up

Making time for Advent

When in Rome do as the ...

Poor Clares’ rich history

Fidelity, respect, chastity

Times were a-changing

Holy Land ‘holiest of all’

Survival guide

Rebecca’s Community, a charity providing support to young people at the Gold Coast schoolies festival, has launched a peer-written online survival guide for schoolies.

The guide - But surely they can’t be serious mum? - can be found at www.schoolies.org.au and covers everything from sunburn and accommodation to sexual assault and drug use.

Dominic Mapstone, director of Rebecca’s Community, says: “At the heart of the project is a sense that each year’s graduate class will look after the next year’s class by passing on their experiences.

“The value of this resource is that young people will actually read the information and take it on board because it comes from other young people who have been on ‘Schoolies’.”

With regard to sexual activity and drug use, Dominic says the writers are challenging school leavers to act with integrity. “They are saying, ‘If you don’t behave a certain way now, why would you start just because it’s schoolies?’” he says.

“As young adults they are being asked to live their lives in a way that they can be proud of themselves.”