A funding pitfall in education for the Burmese refugees along the Thai border may negatively affect their preparedness to go home.
The focus of the international donor community is shifting from the camps towards Burma, and a lack of sufficient resources has forced many organisations working in the camps, such as Jesuit Refugee Service, to make cutbacks to critical programmes like schooling.
At the International Colloquium on Jesuit Secondary Education in Boston, Fr Danny Huang SJ, Regional Assistant for Asia Pacific, posed 10 points of reflection from the Procurates, that he said would be useful to discuss in Jesuit schools, Provinces and Regions.
1. Apostolic instruments
Do we understand ourselves and function as apostolic missions? How?
Students from five countries in Asia Pacific gathered in the Philippines in July for a reflective and experiential forum designed to give them an understanding of what it means to be Ignatian leaders.
After a year in borrowed space at St Mary’s Parish and grammar school, Yap Catholic High School (YCHS) opened its new campus with a celebratory mass on August 19. About 300 people made their way to Lamar for the official opening celebration.
Father John Hagileiram SJ, Regional Superior of the Jesuits in Micronesia, presided at a Mass of Thanksgiving. “This is a historic day,” he reminded the congregation, “on which we should all be proud of what we have achieved together with God’s help.”
Fr Jeremy Clarke SJ, an Australian Jesuit and assistant professor of history at Boston College in the United States, has launched Beyond Ricci, www.bc.edu/beyondricci, a searchable website that provides scholars and researchers access to books containing historical narratives, maps, correspondence and musical compositions in five languages that depict life in China in early modern
Students and teachers from Jesuit and Partner Schools across Australia took part in a Timor Leste Immersion over the school holidays in July. A group of 16 students from eight schools, with three teachers, participated in the programme. Stella Korlaki, a teacher at Xavier Catholic College in Hervey Bay, describes their experience.
We arrived in Darwin in two different groups. Little did we know that we would develop close and supportive friendships through our shared encounters in East Timor.
A Jesuit novice from the United States reflects on the five months he spent in full-time apostolic work in Micronesia, in the Long Experiment that is but one of a series of experiments in which Jesuits participate during their formation. Tim Casey nSJ taught at Yap Catholic High School in Micronesia.
Construction has begun on the Instituto de Educação Jesuíta in Timor Leste.
For the first time in the history of the Society, Jesuit educators across of the world gathered for an International Colloquium on Jesuit Secondary Education. The intent of the Colloquium was to strengthen the network by providing a platform to share ideas, discuss common strengths and challenges, examine our Jesuit mission and identity, and focus on how Jesuit school educators can prepare students to become global leaders. Australian Jesuit Fr Quyen Vu, who has been missioned to work on the education project in Timor Leste, reflects on his experience.
The Jesuits in Timor Leste marked a major milestone on July 14 when they broke ground for the educational institute they are building in Kasait, 18 km west of Dili.
Construction of phase 1 of Instituto de Educação Jesuíta is scheduled to begin at the end of July. The first phase consists of what is needed for the secondary school unit of the institute to open in time for the new school year in January 2013 – the road and entrance, some classrooms and other teaching facilities, and an administration block.