AIOCS LTD Annual Report of Activity 2021

The Australian Institute for Orthodox Christian Studies, LTD

ACN 649 025 141

ABN 76 649 025 141

PO Box 472 Newport Beach NSW 2106 Australia

https://aiocs.net/  

Email info@aiocs.net                             

January 2022 

Annual Report of Activity

2021

AIOCS LTD was registered in March 2021. 

As a not for profit public company limited by guarantee and a charitable organisation, the Australian Institute for Orthodox Christian Studies Ltd/AIOCS (ABN 76649025141) promotes Orthodox Christianity through education and culture. It is a place of research, reflection, dialogue, teaching, and learning. It explores the various Orthodox Christian families present Down Under, Eastern as well as Oriental, with their specificity, and their experiences under the Southern Cross. It works towards the mutual understanding and the wellbeing of these families, fostering their cooperation within the contemporary Australian society.

In 2021, the organisation reached out by various activities, such as the publication of blog posts on its website and video recordings via its dedicated YouTube channel. While the website’s blog welcomes materials on a range of topics and from several authors, the section “Father Matta” focuses on the theological, exegetical, and spiritual contributions of a contemporary Coptic Orthodox desert elder, Father Matta al-Miskīn. The “Father Matta” section of the website is managed by Wagdy Samir, AIOCS Director for Orthodox Studies. The “Faith & Science” section, managed by Doru Costache, AIOCS Founding Director, explores relevant views of Orthodox scholars as well as of scholars of different backgrounds. Both of these main sections of the website pave the way for, hopefully, funded undertakings.

Alongside the above, AIOCS LTD reaches out by maintaining a stream of news items on the website, as well as by way of social media outlets such as its YouTube channel and two Facebook pages, as follows:

https://www.youtube.com/c/TheAustralianInstituteforOrthodoxChristianStudies/videos 

https://www.facebook.com/aiocs.net 

https://www.facebook.com/relatingsandr

We supported the online ministry of Saint Gregory the Theologian’s Orthodox Mission by offering it access to our Zoom account and by hosting their activities on YouTube.

Our intention for the near future is to develop the two major directions, namely, bridging the worlds of Eastern and Oriental Orthodoxy, and faith & science, by way of applications for funding leading to the production of both academic and popular outputs. We envisage establishing an annual prize for the best and most relevant graduate or postgraduate research, to be undertaken under the auspices of AIOCS LTD, towards the end of 2022.

To that end, the organisation also needs further support from private donors. We are grateful to the handful of regular or seldom donors that already contributed to our activities, but we hope that the community at large will begin to appreciate our work more in the near future.

Currently, apart from the said donors, our outreach activities receive further support from AIOCS Press, a for-profit precursor of AIOCS LTD.

Donations can be made directly via the bank account:

AIOCS LTD

Bank: Westpac

Account Name: AIOCS

BSB: 032-196

Account number: 525576

Indirectly, donations can be made via PayPal at:

https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/aiocsnet 

or by ordering AIOCS Press publications:

https://aiocs.net/shop/

We are grateful for the support of our donors.