GEMS appointed as the Conference Organiser for three Special Education Conferences

Following on from the successful management of the 2007 Australian Association of Special Education National Conference, held in Sydney from the 28th - 30th September, 2007, GEMS have been appointed to run three further conferences in the Special Education field.


The first will be the 2008 NSW Special Schools Principals Conference. The conference will be held at Rydges Hotel Parramatta and will host 300 principals from through NSW.

In the second half of the year, GEMS will manage the 2008 Australian Association of Special Education Conference will be held at The Esplanade Hotel, Fremantle from the 18th - 20th September, 2008.

GEMS have also been engaged to manage the 2009 Australian Association of Special Education National Conference to be held in Melbourne in April, 2009.

Blessing of the Dogs, Cats, Horses, Guinea Pigs and Ferrets

In order to recognise the contribution animals make to our every day lives, the NSW RSPCA wanted to organise a "Blessing of the Animals" ceremony to celebrate World Animal Day on Tuesday, 4th October.

As the provider of event management services to the RSPCA, the brief to GEMS Pty Ltd was straightforward.

Find a church willing to host the blessing and then develop and deliver an event that ensured all creatures great and small were recognised in a dignified manner.

Finding a church willing to host a service for a wide variety of animals was the first challenge. Some churches thought we were pulling their leg, while others had never considered allowing animals into the church.

We were delighted when the Parish Priest from St Marks, Drummoyne thought the blessing was a great idea and supported it from the start.

The second challenge was preparing the church in a way that ensured it was left clean, tidy and odour free. That's when we called on the knowledge of the Animal Shelter experts from the RSPCA. They were able to tell us the best way to accommodate a broad range of animals in the church, and from there we developed a bump in and contingency plan that worked perfectly.

The next challenge was convincing people to bring their animals along to be blessed, but that was probably the easiest part of the project.

All members of the RSPCA in the local area received personal invitations as did many of the organisations who work with animals, like the Mounted Police, the Fire Brigade and Customs - and we had an excellent response.

On the day itself we had more than 40 dogs of all shapes and sizes, two guinea pigs, several cats, two horses and ferrets, all of whom behaved superbly during the blessing service.

At the conclusion of the formal service, Father Martin Monaghan then invited all the owners to bring their animals to the front of the church for a personal blessing.

Unfortunately, the Mounted Police horses were just a bit too big and so Father Martin blessed them outside the church after they had enjoyed the service looking through open back doors.

I suppose the best indication of the success of the day was Farther Martin immediately volunteering to host the Blessing of the Pets at St Mark's Drummoyne again next year. The RSPCA were delighted to see how important he saw it was to so many people and St Marks will remain involved once again on World Animal Day in 2006.

So what started off as a crazy idea just a few weeks ago, ended up as a fantastic, interesting and high energy event.

For more information on the Blessing of the Pets and other GEMS Pty Ltd events, call Julie McGraw, General Manager, Events Services (02) 9744 5252