Drama showcase

Advocacy and Action – service and social justice beyond our ‘bubble’

In providing opportunities for our students across and beyond the curriculum during our long phase of remote learning in 2021, action and engagement have been our driving forces.

There has been a flourishing of advocacy and action at the College.

Ironically at a time where we could feel the least useful we have actually found ways to raise our voices and our hands to support those in most need in our local and global community. We have a structure that enables all students to seek and understand justice and to serve willingly and it is called the Salamanca Model.

Initiatives led by student leaders and student action teams across the school have also continued to flourish in 2021. Fridays for Future, an initiative of the Environment and Sustainability Action Team led by Eloise Struthers in Year 12, has seen students take up House Cup challenges in vegan cooking, sustainable arts and craft, healthy exercise in our great outdoors and signing petitions to advocate for endangered animals. These initiatives have been supported by hundreds of our students and they have recorded their contributions on our learning portal as well as earning House Cup points.

We encouraged students and staff interested in taking action in support of the women and children of Afghanistan to write letters and sign petitions. Our Social Justice and Mission Action teams organised Santa Sleeps Out in September, raising funds for St Vincent de Paul Homelessness services. Night Patrol, a longstanding Santa Sabina activity, continued via the donations of snack packs and toiletries for the St Vincent de Paul Society to distribute to homeless people.

So, we continue to raise our hands and our voices in prayer and service at Santa Sabina.

These actions have brought our community together as we live justly and in partnership with each other and the local and global community.

THE SALAMANCA MODEL

Our Salamanca Model is underpinned by the Salamanca Process. As an integral part of the charism of the Order of Preachers and of Catholic Social Teaching, the Salamanca Process calls for a synergy between the Dominican intellectual and apostolic life by directing study, research, analysis and action towards addressing the challenges that the world faces.

At Santa Sabina, students undertake collaborative, project-based service learning and individual acts of service. They are required to identify a challenge the world is facing, conduct research into the issues before determining ways they can take action. Undertaking a course of action to address the issue is the culminating step.

CLOCKWISE: Scenes from Santa Sleeps Out, an activity embraced by hundreds of our students.

Dom’s Day with a difference

This year we celebrated St Dominic’s Day remotely on 5 August as we all continued his work as seekers and speakers of truth, Veritas. It was the 800th Anniversary of his death and the worldwide theme for Dominicans was At Table with St Dominic, inspired by the Mascarella table, on which the first portrait of St Dominic was painted. We celebrated St Dominic as a saint enjoying table fellowship with his brothers, gathered to preach God’s word and share God’s gifts of food and drink. As sons and daughters of Dominic, we too were invited to eat at the table to be united by truth and love and to defend the dignity and rights of all people, particularly those on the peripheries of societies and our world.

WATCH OUR UPLIFTING LITURGY FOR ST DOMINIC’S FEAST DAY