In COVID We Adapt & Thrive

COVID 19 has rocked our world and brought unexpected challenges to all communities. CA and Rainbow Ridge are no exception.

It was claimed that poor communities are generally at much greater risk of significant health and economic impacts from COVID 19. However, at Rainbow Ridge, our aim is to prove that this need not be the case.

CA's Plans 

CA Kids and Staff

Over the last 3 months, we have reshaped our care and development work - adapting to a COVID new normal.

Our plan was not just survive - but determine how we best ADAPT & THRIVE.

So as soon as the pandemic took hold in the west, we adapted and prepared our staff and kids for the inevitable challenges of the restriction with COVID life.

Our social workers fast tracked 2 years of ground work investigations to reintroduce 8 of our kids to new, permanent, safe and healthy family environments.

This remarkable achievement ensured we could decrease our staff levels so that only those staff that could actually live on site remained working at Rainbow Ridge - excepting those few workers that are required to work within and beyond our gates - but who have no physical contact with in-house staff or children.

All working staff have been trained in new mandatory cleanliness and safe distancing practices at Rainbow Ridge and beyond to keep a lid on infection.

Any vulnerable children and staff with elderly or vulnerable family are no longer working or residing at Rainbow Ridge to reduce the potential for infection that could have significant adverse health consequences to them and their loved ones.

We have adopted a cautious approach given that all children will be likely required to return to School nationally in the very near future.

Those children and staff who are unable to work or live on site have chosen to fall under our new CA care program and care packages to assist them and their families/guardians during the COVID period with basic necessities - particularly food.  Your financial assistance would be greatly appreciated.

CA’s Project Work

2020 was shaping up as CA's golden year where we embarked on vamping up CA’s community sustainability education program and courses at our SPEC - including 2 x 2 week intense workshops with Greg Knibbs and our Green Team followed by much field work in the community led by the Green Team.

COVID restrictions and effects have put those plans on hold but allowed us to replan our future by consolidating our in-house education and the quality of our demonstration site.

Our newly planned project for 2020 has now been designed and aptly named “GARDEN TO PLATE” where our whole focus for 2020 will be on improving the design, quality and volume of the food we grow and produce on site - translating to a super diverse, organic and healthy diet for our staff and kids.  

This will be no mean feat where we have trained professional nutritionists assisting our sustainability experts with this endeavour.  We are investing in a satellite dish or like at the SPEC to improve our internet connection so we can hold bi-weekly educational sessions between our experts and our Green Team.

So the objective now is to not only practice and teach communities how to produce foods sustainably to survive but produce the best foods to thrive.

CA’s Team Paves the Way

Our “GARDEN TO PLATE" Project is only ripe to run now because of our late 2019/2020 volunteer works and donations - thanks to all involved,

Our larger works included: 

1. Greg Knibbs and John O’Reilly Sustainability teaching workshop in December 2019 - for staff and community.

2. Livingroom Yoga School and Barzura’s annual community service retreat to Rainbow Ridge - led by Mari Pizzinga & Georgia Brownlee

3. Emjay Insurance Golf Day - run by our trusty Emjay team - Mario, Jeff, Jordan/Smokey & Matt.

You are all familiar with Greg, John and Emjay’s wonderful work so we thought in this newsletter we would focus on the work of some of our newest CA team members that tripped over with Mari and crew.

Their experiences are best shared by some of the videos created by a professional videographer by the name of Cristian Trujillo - one of our newest team members that we hope can continue to share his skills to promote our work - particularly to those small and large businesses that have CSR budgets.  Our track record is now worthy of support as shared in Cristian’s videos. 

Thank you Cristian and team and all our volunteers and supporters that donate and offer their precious time and money to support our work.

We, the kids and the staff and the local community are most grateful for your support.