Discovering the Real Thing: 2025 Children and Families Easter Festival

Who or what is the ‘real thing?’

This was the question more than 40 churches, Christian organisations, and sports clubs explored with SU Australia at 2025’s Children and Families Festival on Easter Saturday at Riverbend Park in Launceston. A crowd as big as never before – possibly more than 4,000 kids and their families – found out that at Easter time we are celebrating the most important event of all time: Jesus dying for us and our wrong doings on the cross, His resurrections, and the gift of eternal life!

The festival was made possible through a partnership between SU Australia in Tasmania, Launceston Alive, and TeenChallenge. Our aim was to share the gospel and the real meaning of Easter with those who don’t yet know Christ, bringing churches together and lasting change in our community. For SU, our main focus was on reaching children, young people, and their families with the good news and the festival was a wonderful opportunity to be Jesus’ hands and feet. By sharing the love we have received from Christ with others in the form of games, craft, prayer, sport, art, music, food, and performances we built relationships, and many seeds were planted.

This year, we enjoyed a wonderful concert by Christian children’s entertainer and songwriter Dan Warlow, exciting dance performances by an inspirational dance team of Door of Hope youngsters, lovely live music by the Wilson’s team from iSee, the Easter Story, and an all-in dance finale led by Melissa and George! Soccer, archery, chocolate egg craft, bracelet making, balloon sculpting, face painting, and an array of different activities kept kids, their parents and everyone young at heart busy. Then there was plenty of international food – African, Asian, European, and South American – plus pancakes and the good old sausage sizzle.

Everything was free which for the wider public is a gesture of generosity they find difficult to comprehend but is a symbol of how we have been given the gift of the Good News.

Written by Stephanie Sebastian, Area Manager Tasmania, SU Australia.