Page 661 - Week 02 - Thursday, 19 February 2015
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There were seven sports taking place at the meet, with track and field, swimming, yachting, BMX, water polo, golf and gymnastics. Canberra was invited to attend, and fielded a team which was managed by Little Athletics ACT. It was an impressive group of athletes. All the team performed to a high level and there were a number of personal bests.
The team had two notable successes. Kieran Reilly from the Calwell club took bronze in the 1,500 metres, behind athletes from China and New Taipei. He achieved a five-second PB for that result, a very impressive effort. Another Calwell athlete, Ashleigh Lawrence, achieved a unique distinction at the closing ceremony in being awarded the fair play award by the ICG committee for the most impressive act of sportsmanship across all seven sports. Ashleigh is a shot-putter who shared her shoes with a Polish athlete whose shoes were lost in transit on the way and who would otherwise have been unable to compete. It was actually a great story. The two young female athletes reportedly had to swap shoes between each of them throwing to enable them to continue in the competition. I thought this was a marvellous story and I was very impressed by Ashleigh’s efforts in supporting the competitor from Poland.
The vision of promoting peace and goodwill among children of different cultural backgrounds is working, assisted by social media internationally. Two months later, all of our athletes are still in regular contact on Facebook with friends that they met from around the world.
I was pleased to have met the athletes and their families before they left for Canberra to travel to Newcastle and to wish them well in their endeavours. I hosted them here at the Assembly to wish them well on their way. All of the athletes were very excited. All of them were looking forward to the event and hopeful of a PB. I was very pleased to hear their results.
I would like to congratulate the team on representing the ACT at the International Children’s Games, and for all the hard work and training done in preparing for the event, not just by the athletes but also by their families, coaches, managers and the support team at Little Athletics ACT.
I-Care Australia
Jesus is Lord Church
MR COE (Ginninderra) (6.04): I rise this evening to speak about I-Care Australia. I-Care Australia is a charity which came out of the Canberra congregation of the Jesus is Lord Church. The purpose of the charity is to help people in need and to change lives through the caring power of the community. I-Care Australia was set up following the success of the Haiyan-Yolanda appeal which was launched in November 2013. The board hopes that the new charity will continue to support Filipinos through community partnerships in Australia and the Philippines. This is indeed a worthy goal. As is well known, the Philippines is prone to natural disasters. Through I-Care Australia’s support it will help those most in need, which, unfortunately, is too often an occurrence.
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