Service-Learning at Clairvaux MacKillop College is much more than learning by doing. It can be a pilgrimage of discovery in how to be in the world in new, more hopeful, and just ways. In these programs we go beyond mere surface-experience in our endeavours to develop students who are compassionately engaged human beings. There are five options which offer students an opportunity to enter into the world of homelessness, refugees and asylum seekers, ecological conversion, aboriginal reconciliation, or caring for the sick.

The Shared Path Framework that undergirds this work invites us into a journey of deep awareness of our common humanity. On this journey, change and transformation occurs through cultivating empathy and solidarity rather than through the idea of helping or fixing the hungry and poor (servants and rescuers) or ticking boxes for hours worked (consumers).

Based on the premise that when we intentionally connect our brain and heart, the way we see and experience ourselves and ‘the other’ is rewired, then we become pilgrims together on the journey of sustainable action into the future.