Fourteen students and an alumnus of the Saint Aloysius College Milsons Point will travel to the Philippines for an “immersion program” which will include building houses for the poor under the auspices of the Gawad Kalinga.

The program also includes for the participants to live with simple farming families in Kiangan, Ifugao, and spending time with prisoners of the National Penitentiary in Bilibid,

Students will also visit an orphanage for street children in Bulacan, a hospice for abandoned elderly, and a school for squatter children in Manila.

St. Aloysius College, founded in 1879, is a private school for boys run by the Jesuits (Order of Jesus). The immersion is part of the school’s co-curricular program for the holistic Catholic development of its male students.

St. Aloysius’ Rector Ross Jones, SJ said that the students will be the seventh group that the school has sent to the Philippines. The group is composed of Grade 11 students ages 15 to 16 years.

“We live in the community where we build, getting to know the people whom we are serving,” Ross said.

The immersion is a three-week program, and “experience has shown that the boys will learn from it and their hearts and minds will be shaped by it,” Ross added.

Ross said that the program is open to interested students, and there is always a waiting list for each group. Accommodation in the Philippines is largely as billets with families.

The program concludes with structured reflections and de-briefing to help the participants “re-enter” their own culture and process the experience to see where the experience might lead them next.

Philippine Consul General Maria Theresa P. Lazaro said that the Philippine immersion of St. Aloysius has been very successful and other schools in New South Wales are considering duplicating the program.

She added that the tradition of Jesuit education, particularly its credo “preferential love for the poor”, has had an impact on many generations of students in the Philippines.

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