Stories from Sacred Heart Mission's op shops
Sacred Heart Mission has a longstanding partnership with The Readings Foundation.
Last week Bronte Coates visited the Mission in St Kilda and learned about the importance of book donations to their work.
Sacred Heart Mission assists people who are homeless or living in poverty to find shelter, food, care and support. They run a dining hall, a health clinic and a women’s centre, as well as other amazing projects and programs.
Along with fundraisers (including their upcoming annual Light Up A Life cocktail party!), a cornerstone of the Mission’s operations are their op shops. They now have eight in total, all of which are up and running largely thanks to volunteers and donations.
For a snapshot of how valuable donations are, I’d asked community relations officer Carly Iles about books and she shared this impressive figure: books donated to Sacred Heart Mission’s op shops account for approximately $250,000 of income each year.
Given that it costs $4 to provide someone in need with a nutritious three-course meal in the Mission’s dining hall, these donated books roughly translate into 62,500 meals a year!
I also met with the manager of the Mission’s op shops, Wade Piva, who pointed out additional benefits of book donations, including the particular joy of the op-shopping parent who comes across a book from their childhood (now out-of-print) and simply has to purchase it for no other reason than to share something of their own childhood with their young children. Based on my own happy discoveries among the bric-a-brac of such places, I have no doubt that these kinds of serendipitous moments are frequent occurrences in the Mission’s op shops.
Piva also shared another, more sobering, example of what donations to op shops enable: ‘One of the great things about the books at our op shops is their affordability for those who would otherwise have to go without. There is often a misconception that because someone has very little, then they should perhaps be satisfied with possessions that are barely held together at the seams and stitches, but everyone is entitled to a sense of dignity. To be able to purchase a beautiful book in good condition goes just a little way in helping to afford them that.’
With so many people these days seeking to ‘de-clutter’ their homes (see The Life-changing Magic of Tidying: A Simple, Effective Way to Banish Clutter Forever by Marie Kondo for inspiration to this end), running a fine comb through your own bookshelf at home seems a relatively simple way to contribute to the work of Sacred Heart Mission.
