[Linux-aus] Request for Grant from Linux Australia for Ubertweak

[Tim Ansell]

On Tue, 2006-09-12 at 12:41 +1000, Elspeth Thorne wrote:
> Date: 2006-09-12
> 
> Project Name: Ubertweak, http://ubertweak.org.au
> 
> Aim of Project: 

Please note, I'm not trying to start a religious flame war and if you
have nothing constructive to add and must send an email please reply
directly to me.

> We give the students a week of computer-related acitivities, 
> including exposure to licencing (such as the GPL), open source software 
> (they recieve a custom Knoppix Live CD) and many other things. See the 
> website for more information (there's quite a lot there!).  Each year 
> the students are also given the collected results of the work on camp - 
> usually another two CDs and a DVD.  As evidence of the work done on the 
> camp, we give packs to our sponsors, usually including the camp manual, 
> tshirt, the electronic materials (one to four CDs/DVDs). We also include 
> any sponsor's material in the distributed packs that is donated (totes, 
> pens, etc). Additionally, we place the sponsor's logo on our flyers and 
> advertising material (if desired), and on the website.

This all sound brilliant. The stuff on website all looks very
interesting. I definitely wish that when I was at your target age
something like this was available to me. A huge amount of contributions
to FOSS is by young adults.

> Ubertweak is a Christian camp for high school kids that 
> is run (at present) twice a year in Winter and Spring, and has been 
> running since 1996. Our parent organisation is Scripture Union 
> Queensland. 

I have to admit that as a non-Christian this makes me a little uneasy. 

I thank you for being open enough to clearly mention in the proposal
that you are a Christan camp.

>From your website it appears that the camp is clearly for the promotion
and furthering the Christian faith.

For example, on the Leader section:
        It is a requirement of Scripture Union camps that leaders be
        committed christians involved in annual scripture union
        leadership training events.
and on the A Day in the Life of section:
        9:00am Where else should God be but first in our lives, and our
        day.

I don't think it would be appropriate for Linux Australia to provide
funds for an event which specifically has the purpose of promoting a
specific religion (or even no religion, such as an atheist event).

PLEASE NOTE: The above is MY opinion of the matter and does not reflect
in anyway, anyone elses opinion.

I have no problem with the usage of FOSS software and tools for the
further of people individual faiths.

> Person Responsible for Request: Elspeth Thorne, Director, Spring.
> 
> Request: Any sponsorship material is welcome, however, we would 
> appreciate assistance with transport costs. We need to transport 
> approximately 50 people to the camp site (in Toogoolawah, Queensland) 
> from Brisbane. The service we have used in previous years is 
> unavailable, so we are using an alternative bus service, which is 
> costing us approximately $400 above the budgeted figure. A grant to make 
> up this shortfall would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks for your time.

Tim Ansell