The Maholian Way - Part Two: The Maholian Way in the lives of two

One of the earliest priorities of the government of Maggie Kincaid that took power in 1987 was to address the situation of marginalised communities. Lynvale was one of the localities selected, eighteen months after Carla and her children settled there. The government funded non-government agencies to operate programs in each locality, often contracting two or more agencies to work collaboratively but independently in the one locality. In Lynvale, two were funded initially. One was a community housing association called Abode, which took over the management of  housing tenancies and maintenance from the Maholian Ministry of Housing, as well as being contracted to do community development work. The two Abode staff were based on the estate, using a vacant flat as an office.

Another agency was to operate a community centre – using a vacant house – and this contract was won by a Catholic order of nuns, the Sisters of St Martha and St Mary, establish in 1905 by a Maholian nun, Bernadette Flynn, for the purpose of working to improve the lives of  ‘slum-dwellers’, particularly women and children.

Once the Abode office was established, its staff set out to get to know residents and encourage them to talk with each other, but for some time the two workers had little success with this. They tried setting up morning teas and few came. When they attempted to strike up conversations in the street residents seemed reluctant to talk to them – perhaps because they were seen to represent authority and the residents feared the reactions of drug dealers to these conversations – although often the same residents would ring the staff when they were back in their office, because they couldn’t be observed doing so. One day on an impulse the Abode staff set up a sausage sizzle in the street, and the smell of sausages and onions worked its magic. About thirty people congregated around the table and started to talk, and this was to the beginning of many such discussions.

Meanwhile at Friendship House, the newly-opened community centre run by the Sisters of St Martha and St Mary, things moved just as slowly at first, but then picked up speed. A playgroup was arranged, some older men started to do woodwork out in the garage, and a women’s discussion group got going, with Carla as one of its participants. An art therapist was invited to come along and work with this last group over a couple of sessions. He gave them large sheets of paper and felt pens and asked them first to draw their lives in Lynvale as they saw them at that time, and then to draw what they would like their lives to look like within this community.

This revealed some common desires: to be connected with others and enjoy their company; to live in a pleasant environment that had trees and flowers and ponds and was free of rubbish and graffiti; to get rid of drug-dealers and not have drug-affected people walking or lying around; and to do things together, such as exercise, cooking, and gardening. One woman drew lots of buses going to and from the nearest shopping centre, while Carla drew a laundromat.

• Page 11