Scotch College

A message of tolerance and empathy

Scotch and Servants Community Housing have launched a book based on interviews with residents from a low income rooming house in Hawthorn.

Words: Anthony Antoniadis (Year 12) and Jeremy Kong (Year 12) Photography: Brian Hall

Ian Savage, Emily Atchinson, Matt Maullin, Jeremy King, Mark Williams, Anthony Antoniadis, David Brown, Hunder McWhinney, Rachael Kerr

Scotch College and Servants Community Housing (Servants) recently celebrated a book launch of a staggering 5,280 copies, with the aim of inviting the reader into the complex worlds of some of the more vulnerable members of our society. The book is based on interviews with residents from a low income rooming house in Hawthorn called Carrical House.

Building on the great success of Voices – a play written and performed for the 2009 Melbourne Fringe Festival by Scotch Collegians, using the stories and experiences shared by the residents of Carrical House – Scotch once again partnered with Servants in 2010, to produce a publication to spread awareness further among the local community.

More than a year ago we (Jeremy Kong – 12MH, Anthony Antoniadis – 12GY, Ms Rachel Kerr – Scotch staff and Mr Matt Maudlin, the CEO of Servants), sat on a couch in the Carrical mansion, brainstorming an idea for a project.

Although ideas were articulated, more often than not we would walk away thinking that we were being too optimistic.

A year later we celebrated the launch of Anthology: Stories of respect, dignity & hope, capping off a project beyond anything we had ever envisioned.

Over the course of many Thursdays at Carrical, as part of the Social Services programme, we were not only listening to the residents and collecting ideas for stories and poems; we were truly learning for the first time in our lives that the world is so much more layered and complex than we thought.

We learned that people always remain people, regardless of their situation. A recovering drug addict or a mental illness patient is a myth, a label. In reality there are just people, some of whom happen to be unemployed or have encountered various difficulties in life; but that is not how they should be distinguished. They are human, and that is something that nobody should ever take away from them, regardless of their situation, externally and internally.

This is a project that will forever be close to our hearts. Not only has it broadened our minds – all of us lucky enough to be involved with this anthology – but it has really touched something inside of us. Many of the residents’ experiences resonate with our own, and consequently remind us of the ingrained humanity within us and within everyone.

This anthology is simply one of being human. For this reason, the most satisfying thing about the anthology is not finishing the project, but the realisation that we are all the same, and that through the anthology we are spreading a message of tolerance and empathy. We hope that the anthology provides to others even a shade of the poignancy that making it evoked in us.

To find out more about the work of Servants Community Housing and to order a free copy of Anthology: stories of respect, dignity & hope please email Servants CEO, Mr Matt Maudlin at matt@servants.org.au. GS