Reclink has gone international. The organisation founded by Werribee resident Peter Cullen has branched out to India in a bid to teach the most disadvantaged people living in slums how to play Aussie Rules football.
The organisation was founded in 1989 while Mr Cullen was working at Sacred Heart Mission, supporting the most disadvantaged and at-risk people in the back streets of St Kilda.
“I saw people living in a lost world, where there seemed to be no clear pathways to opportunity, no positive way for them to be involved in the world,” he says.
“I thought, what if we could provide an opportunity that was immediate and could move people into another world, a world that could be caring and compassionate, something clearly life-giving, ongoing and structured?”
From that idea Reclink was born. It has grown into a national organisation that works in partnership with more than 360 community organisations to deliver hundreds of sport, recreation and art events to thousands of disadvantaged Australians.
The success of the model has led Mr Cullen to take it to Mumbai, where both men and women are getting involved in Aussie Rules.
Reflecting on a recent trip to Mumbai to check on progress, Mr Cullen said he realised there was nothing like being on a footy ground.
“As I watched people going back to their harsh living environments [after games], I realised that [the opportunity] to run, feel alive and create is so much more limited in Mumbai than in our privileged society,” he said.
Mr Cullen shared testimonies of Indians involved in the program.
Sunesh Sawart, a tournament organiser, wrote to him of losing his parents at the age of eight and being forced to start work. He said involvement in the game had been life-changing for him.
“I never thought at such a young age that I would have such responsibility, organising things and being a coach,” he wrote.
Mr Cullen now aims to take Reclink further abroad, hoping to be selected as one of 30 organisations to attend a multi-faith sports conference at the Vatican.
The three-day event will examine the role sport can play in society.
