ERCRS provides free learning support, tuition and a range of recreational opportunities to students of a disadvantaged or refugee background.
Our values
Presence: We respect the dignity of all people, by working cooperatively and collaboratively with others, and by becoming engaged in the hopes, joys and aspirations of the wider community.
Compassion: We work at alleviating the suffering of others by developing understanding, empathy and respect in our relationships, as well as promoting social justice and human rights.
Liberation: We strive to recognise and liberate the potential within each person, especially those disadvantaged, so they can be healthy, valued and productive members of society.
Our programs
A Homework Club for primary students (Grades 3-6) operates in St Albans on Mondays and Wednesdays from 3:30-5:00pm at the Errington Centre, and Thursdays from 3:00-5:00pm at Sunshine Harvester Primary School. This program involves the participation of peer tutors from secondary schools around Melbourne and adult volunteers from the community.
A Tutoring Program for secondary and tertiary students operates on Tuesday afternoons from 3:30-5:30pm at the Errington Centre and Saturdays from 10:30am-12:30pm at the Catholic Regional College Library in St Albans. Students are paired one-to-one with an adult tutor who can assist them with their studies.
Social activities are for students and volunteers involved in either of the above learning support programs. These include excursions and events throughout the year as well as two camps with our sister organisation, Edmund Rice Camps Victoria.
The Young Womens' Mentoring Program involves bimonthly excursions around Melbourne for students in years 10-11 from the tutoring program and their volunteer mentors. It provides a forum for these young women to support one another, build confidence, develop positive peer networks and become role models within their community.
Our history
Edmund Rice Refugee Services (ERRS) was established in 2002 as a Christian Brothers initiative to provide educational and learning support to newly arrived refugee communities in St Albans, an inner western suburb of Melbourne. Since the 1950s, the Brimbank area (of which St Albans and Sunshine are a part) has been a magnet for the resettlement of migrant and refugee communities due to it's relatively low housing costs and high cultural diversity.
During a twelve-month research period in 2001, Br Chris Meehl, the original founder of ERRS and head of the Ministry, discovered that very few young people of a refugee background (of Afghani and Middle Eastern decent mainly) were completing secondary school in the St Albans area (Western English Language Centre, 2011). With the Christian Brothers' strong focus on education and learning, it is not surprising then that a decision was made to establish an after school-hours learning support program, or as it became affectionately known, a ‘Homework Club’.
The goal of the Homework Club was to work alongside the local schools to facilitate access for students of a refugee background to education and learning through targeted tutoring support. The program operated on Mondays and Wednesdays after school and on Saturday mornings during the school term.
Initially, the Homework Club relied on Christian Brothers and adult volunteers to provide one to one tutoring for the children and young people who attended the service. This volunteer base was extended soon after ERRS opened it's doors to include 'peer tutors', who were senior high school students from secondary schools around Victoria (and their teachers) who were actively engaged in social justice advocacy through community service programs.
In 2005, the Homework Club program expanded to operate out of a local Catholic school in Sunshine where it assisted up to 30 students per week until 2010, when it closed it's doors due to declining numbers and the development of other learning support programs in the area. The Sunshine Homework Club provided services for students of a Sudanese, Ethiopian, Eritrean and Chin Burmese background. The St Albans Homework Club continued to grow with Brothers such as Sean McManus, Frank Hennessey and Terry Giles at the helm.
From 2003 onwards the resettlement of refugees from the Middle East in the St Alban’s area declined due to the provision of cheaper housing in the outer suburbs of Melbourne. The St Albans Homework Club from 2005 onward predominantly provided services for students of a Sudanese background with a small number of recently arrived members of the Burmese refugee community. By 2011, children and young people of a Sudanese background constituted nearly all of the service users of the St Albans Homework Club and the subsidiary programmes (Drop In Centre, Girls Mentoring Program) conducted by the Ministry.
Over the years many of the young learners involved in the learning support programs, who were refugees, have taken their place as citizens and members of Australian society. Many have even returned to become tutors to new generations of refugee young people. In March of 2012, to recognise this positive shift in culture and demographics, Edmund Rice Refugee Services officially changed its name to Edmund Rice Community and Refugee Services (ERCRS). This was a subtle but important expansion in the ministry's scope to be inclusive of all young people, refugee or otherwise disadvantaged, who require learning support, and participation in social and recreational activities to improve the quality of their lives.
The Edmund Rice Story
Edmund Rice was born at Westcourt, the family tenant farm in Callan, County Kilkenny, Ireland, on 1 June 1762. He grew up in a relatively well-off Catholic family where he developed in faith and received a limited education before joining his uncle’s business in Waterford, providing supplies for ships and for the British Navy and Army. He was respected on all sides because of his fair dealings, particularly in paying the producers for their livestock of which he was a good judge.
Edmund was very successful in business and became very wealthy as did many of his social class. He married and it is understood that his wife was Mary Elliot. She died at about the time their daughter, also Mary, was born in 1789. The infant was raised by Edmund and his step-sister, Joan, who became his housekeeper. In his grief and the turmoil of these circumstances, his commitment to God developed to the stage where he considered entering religious life. Edmund was becoming more aware of the desires of many of his acquaintances for an Ireland liberated from English rule and of the poverty of most people throughout the land. After much discernment and the recommendations of some who knew him, including the forthright Bishop of Waterford, Thomas Hussey, he “abandons the ambitions of his class”, sells his business and begins instructing boys of the poor living on the streets of Waterford. In 1802, the project begins in a stable in the town while a new school is built on the edge of the city closer to where many of the poor reside. He is determined that school will be conducted according to his improvements on the best standards of the day.
The free school, known as Mount Sion, opened in 1803. Edmund and his first couple of helpers were soon caring for two to three hundred students, providing food and clothing as well as an education that would help them in the work places of business and commerce and that would build their prayer life and knowledge of the Bible. Edmund was following the call of the Spirit into a religious life that would impact both Church and society. He and his helpers lived at Mount Sion and this was the beginning of the Christian Brothers.
The Congregation spread as other bishops sent men to join the work and begin schools in other towns. Edmund continued to be involved in Irish nationalism, helping new orders of sisters with finances and investments, Temperance, works of charity involving orphans and children of alcoholic parents as well as helping slaves to escape and hide. His life was more and more about Liberation which begins with ‘welcoming strangers’. He died in 1844.
Pope John Paul II beatified Edmund Rice at a ceremony in St. Peter's Square, Rome, on 6th October 1996. He became known as Blessed Edmund Ignatius Rice. His official feast day is May 5.