AN AID organisation has harnessed the power of pancakes to spread awareness of and raise funds for its work.
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Caritas Australia volunteers and students from Catholic College Bendigo and Marist College were in Hargreaves Mall on Tuesday to give pancakes to passers-by while handing out pamphlets and collecting donations.
Pancake Day, or Shrove Tuesday, marked the launch of the Project Compassion, a six-week fundraising event for the Catholic organisation and its work.
Caritas north/north eastern Victoria co-ordinator Kerry Stone said the event ran throughout Lent, traditionally a time in the Christian community of fasting and giving alms to the poor.
Students from the city’s eight Catholic primary schools sang at Tuesday’s launch, at which Bishop Les Tomlinson also spoke.
Ms Stone said Caritas Australia partnered with communities in about 30 countries across the world.
“There’s a huge variety of ways in which impoverished people are enabled to transform their own lives,” she said.
In each of the past couple of years, Ms Stone said, the organisation’s north/north eastern Victoria region had raised about $500,000 in the six weeks.
She said she hoped it would top that amount this year.