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| SGI Around the World |
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[Courtesy, October 2005 SGI Quarterly] |
| Australia |
| SGI's Role in Multicultural Australia |
By Hans Van Der Bent, Former SGI-Australia General Director
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In recent years SGI-Australia has increased its interaction with other faiths and become involved with many social and community activities. This has led to ongoing dialogues and partner relationships with a wide range of other organizations promoting peace, tolerance and nonviolence in Australian society.
The first chapter of SGI-Australia was established in 1964, and in 1977 we opened our first culture center in Sydney. During the 1980s, we started spreading our wings by holding conventions and cultural festivals on a national level.
Currently, our membership is around 3,000, with members in Sydney, Victoria, Queensland, Western Australia, Canberra, Darwin, Cairns, South Australia, Tasmania and more rural regions and 34 different cultures involved in our total membership, including a high proportion of members of Asian origin as befits Australia's geographical position and ethnic makeup. The distances between each of the states and the isolation of the country areas mean that each state has its own distinct characteristics. |
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A women's peace workshop hosted by SGI-Australia
in Melbourne, March 2005 |
The SGI movement in Australia is centered on an informal group-gathering style which reaches out to a wide range of people in different cultural, work-related, student, language-based and interest groups. This style attracts young people and those with a strong interest in cultural activities. The organization has also developed an innovative approach to Buddhist study centered on small group discussions which focus on the application of Buddhist principles to issues in daily life and Australian society.
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| Peace Events |
Since August 1998, members in Victoria have been participating in an annual interfaith peace event to commemorate Hiroshima Day. Together with Pax Christi, we have worked holding dialogue and friendship gatherings of different faiths to promote peace. The 2005 interfaith activity, in commemoration of 60 years since Hiroshima, was held at the University of Melbourne. The event comprised representation from the Bahá'í, Buddhist, Christian, Indigenous Australian, Islamic, Jewish and Sikh communities.
Our youth members in Queensland have been closely involved with the Griffith University Multi-Faith Centre as well as joining an interfaith lecture series at the University of Queensland.
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| Sydney |
In June 2004, Dean Lawrence Carter of the Martin Luther King Jr. International Chapel at Morehouse College also gave public lectures under the sponsorship of SGI-Australia at a number of venues on the topic of peace and awarded the Chapel's "Gandhi, King, Ikeda Community Builders' Award" to Dr. Marie Joan Winch, founder of the Marr Modditj Aboriginal Health College, who has devoted her life to improving the health and welfare of her Aboriginal people.
In New South Wales, together with Forum for Australian Islamic Relationships (FAIR), SGI-Australia has held two seminars this year: "Race, Religion and Rhetoric" and "Conflict Transformation and Terrorism--Implications for the 21st Century," in conjunction with Sydney University and peace scholar Prof. Johan Galtung.
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| Women members of SGI-Australia have also held several local-level seminars on peace issues, using the theme "Victory Over Violence" and including discussion of domestic violence and other pressing problems facing Australian women. |
| Celebrating Diversity |
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| Celebrating Harmony Day |
In 2000, SGI-Australia was invited by the Office of Citizenship and Multicultural Interest (OCMI) and the Western Australia Museum to hold the "Children of Terezin" exhibition in Perth. Western Australia is one of the most diverse communities in the world, with its population drawing from more than 200 ethnic backgrounds. The exhibition was launched on March 21, which is Australian National Harmony Day, an annual event in conjunction with the United Nations International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination.
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| Cairns Peace Week |
In the following year, SGI-Australia, together with OCMI, celebrated National Harmony Day at the Perth Zoo with the opening of a Harmony Garden and a Global Village.
Dr. Geoff Gallop, premier of Western Australia and minister of citizenship and multicultural interests, acknowledged that the centerpiece of the event was the Global Village which was put together mainly by SGI-Australia members.
Over the past 10 years, a number of events focused on environmental protection have been held.
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| The "Respect the Ocean" event in Brisbane, 1998 |
"Respect the Ocean" was a large convention and exhibition, held both in Brisbane and the Gold Coast in 1998. The exhibition promoted the need to develop a greater awareness of the interrelatedness of human activities and the health of the oceans.
In 2001, the Earth Charter Asia Pacific Conference was held in Brisbane. SGI-Australia members hosted a dinner and provided cultural performances to enliven the conference.
Clean-Up Australia Day is an annual event carried out on the first Sunday in March. Members of SGI-Australia in Perth have participated in this day annually since 1992. Members also supported the annual National Tree Planting Day at the Eric Singleton Bird Sanctuary in Perth in July 2005.
Because of the broad spread of ethnicity in Australian society today, people are concerned about the many different cultures and religions that are appearing day by day. SGI-Australia is responding to this by facilitating cultural exchanges and interfaith dialogues both in larger events and in smaller forums and working groups. We firmly believe that there are no strangers out there in society, only friends that we haven't met yet.
Such interfaith events and seminars, as well as cultural exchange and environmental protection activities, are activities that we will continue in Australia in support of spreading goodwill and friendship in our local community.
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| Yanchop National Park, Perth |
Website URL: http://www.sgiaust.org.au
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