Ballarat and Courage to Care
Ballarat, home to the mainland’s oldest synagogue, will host Courage to Care’s travelling Educational Program and Exhibition later this month.
School students find the courage to care
Courage to Care is a volunteer-run educational program, an initiative of B’nai B’rith, a worldwide service organization, that draws from lessons of Holocaust Survivors and their rescuers to educate high school students about the perils of prejudice. Participants in Courage to Care programs are educated about the Holocaust as an extreme example of the effects of discrimination and prejudice. They are shown examples of Upstanders: individuals who have demonstrated remarkable humanity by risking their personal safety, their livelihood or their social status in standing up for victims of discrimination or prejudice.
In using the Holocaust as the background to a discussion about humanitarianism, Courage to Care sends an overwhelmingly hopeful message: Ordinary People are Capable of Extraordinary Acts. This idea is brought home to students attending the Courage to Care program in the context of a facilitated discussion that encourages students to be Upstanders.
Courage to Care is proud to be bringing its award-winning travelling Educational Program and Exhibition to the Museum of Australian Democracy at Eureka (MADE). The Exhibition will be open to the public from Tuesday 10 March and some 1300 students from the Ballarat regional area are scheduled to attend the Program.
The official launch of the Exhibition will take place on Sunday 15 March at 4pm at MADE. Members of the public are invited to attend, view the exhibition, hear the keynote address of MADE Director Jane Smith, and learn more about Courage to Care. Sissy Austin, Indigenous activist and educator will be presented with the Program’s Local Hero award.
The gold rush brought many Jewish prospectors and suppliers and the first congregation held prayers in 1853. For decades the local community was the largest in the Victorian colony. The synagogue building was erected in 1861.
The exhibition will close on March 31.
I will be in Ballarat after 18/3. Where the Synagogue is? Please provide address if you can.
Thank you
Collin
There is also a very old synagogue of similar age in Broken Hill, NSW that I have visited a couple of times. Broken Hill has not had a Jewish community or resident rabbi for 40 years, the synagogue is intact and today is a museum, well worth a visit.