The COVID chronicles

At the South Sydney Herald Marjorie worked nimbly to address the implications of the pandemic – getting the news out to readers, ensuring her team of volunteer writers, editors and distributors worked safely, and convincing advertisers to stick with the local paper while hundreds of other regional papers around the country were forced to close or were driven online.

Two front page stories she organised during this time are worth a look – see ‘Spread only kindness’ and ‘Isolation enlightenment’.

Her other work highlights have been Editing a Multicultural LGBTIQA+ Support Directory and a Welcome to Australia kit for new migrants and refugees, managing social media messages about COVID-19 safety and services information in a diversity of languages, developing a diversity and inclusion tagline and statement for a CALD non-profit, promoting Refugee Week across various platforms, including a Facebook Live Event, which featured stories told by three refugees and with practical information from the Refugee Advice and Casework Service (RACS) about how to provide refugees with support, and writing her summer reading highlights (including Josephine Rowe’s collection Here Until August).

Stephen continues as Corporate Affairs and External Relations Manager at Settlement Services International, working from home since March 30 due to COVID-19 and coming to love Zoom in a weird Stockholm syndrome kind of way. Major areas of recent focus have been Refugee Week and the #NobodyLeftBehind campaign. In January he enjoyed two weeks at Ningaloo Reef, where he and Mrs Webb took some all right photos of coral, tropical fish and beer. He is reading John Kinsella and watching Midnight Diner.

Photo credit: Adam Sébire