APAC Justice and Peace Commission 4 November 2005-11-22
ATTENDANCE:
Sr Ester Ma. Alunan, Fr Tony Banks (Acting Chairperson), Fr Brian Fitzpatrick, Fr Asis Bajao Rambuyon, Br Barnabas Jeong Dok Kim
APOLOGIES:
Fr Willy Arana, Sr Carmeli Catan,
The meeting began at 9:10am with prayer.
The meeting then considered its tasks as indicated by the Acts of the APAC convention held in Inchon in July and as discussed at the Executive Council meeting held in Manila on the previous day to this meeting.
1. IMMERSION EXPERIENCE
In examining the task of how to conduct an immersion experience or a series of immersion experiences the Commission believed that we needed to describe an immersion experience so that we were speaking of the same event across our different cultures.
It is a 7-10 day program (longer than an exposure experience of 1-2 days) in which participants come to face the reality of life in a designated area. Ideally this will involve sharing the life of a family in a family home; however, as participants will come from a range of experiences of life and from different socio-cultural backgrounds the immersion experience may need to be of a communal nature for participants inside the designated area but in constant contact with the people of the area.
The immersion experience will involve the following elements:
Social Investigation
Contact Building
Building as one Community
Theological Reflection.
The aims of the immersion program are
- To experience the lives of the poor
- to understand the gaps between the poor and the rich (both ways)
- the material gaps, the spiritual gaps
- To recognise our common life
- our life in God
- our brotherhood and sistership
- To appreciate what we have in our daily lives
- To create a dialogue that includes the greater human family
- To create an understanding of what it is to be poor
- To create relationships and structures to help on another
The program will include:
Long distance orientation for international participants
- This should include cultural sensitivity; enabling reasonable expectations of the event, dietary and health issues; openness to receiving from the poor
Briefings for host families
- This should include asking that they not borrowing money or food to look after the visitors,
- that visitors be immersed into the normal daily routine and take part in the tasks and/or the tedium of the day
During the social investigation stage
- the visitors will be encouraged to pose their questions and to field questions from their hosts.
- The history of the project or the barangay will be prepared and visitors will be made familiar with the geography and the culture of the area.
- Contact Building will occur at this time and the assignments of hosts and visitors will follow.
- Provision will also be made where for diet, health or cultural reasons participants would be better suited to communal sharing of life with other participants rather than face a more intimate sharing of life with families. It may be possible to enable some international participants to live in community for some days before living with a family for the final days.
- Building Together will require ongoing dialogue among participants and hosts as well as participation in the normal activities of day to day life. This dialogue may need to be facilitated at the level of each family, but will also include communal dialogue across the greater community.
Theological Reflection is a process that involves hosts and visitors to discern together
- the visitors will be encouraged to pose their questions and to field questions from their hosts.
Debriefing will continue in the host community as required.
International participants
will also require a program to come to terms with their experience and to relay the impact of the experience to the church communities from whence they came.
In preparation of this exercise with a schedule of mid to late February 2007 the following tasks were assigned:
- Sr Ester and Sr Carmeli are to review Zambales and the new housing projects of Regina Carmeli University and recommend a site for the immersion experience. They are then to design a budget for the event.
- Sr Ester will document previous immersion experiences in Zambales so as to assist in the creation of this new international program.
- Fr Brian and Fr Tony and Br Barnabas will prepare profiles on stages of preparation and debriefing for international participants.
- An Indonesian Augustinian may be appointed to the Commission. In the meantime, Fr Tony will contact the Indonesian Sisters and Fr Tromp as to the possibility of holding a similar experience in Indonesia in late 2007. If this is not viable then we may approach India during discussions at the OSAAP meeting in October 2006 to ascertain their ability and interest in such a program.
- After the February 2007 experience, we will review the activity and look to the possibility of holding a similar activity for APAC leaders in the 2 week period prior to the next APAC convention in the Philippines.
SCHOLARSHIPS / AWARDS
While we affirmed their value for poor students, questions were raised as to whether the awarding of scholarships would raise the profile of APAC or become lost in areas where many scholarships were on offer from a variety of sources.
A scholarship of $US600 would cover most fees, but where the student required dormitory accommodation, uniform, transportation, and project costs a further $US750 would be needed.
A general discussion was held on criteria by which such a scholarship should be awarded. It was clear that most believed that scholarships for vocational training were path to follow and that they could be made available in Indonesia, India and the Philippines.
To enable a regular scholarship to be offered an endowment fund would need to be established. It is believed that this is the work of the Executive Council and so we recommend that the President of APAC write to all Provincials, Vicars and Congregational Leaders outlining a request for such monies and seeking both the support of our Religious Leaders and suggestions from them as to people who might be approached to also support such an endowment.
We believe that criteria needs to be developed in each of the countries in which scholarships may be offered and then refined at a regional level to ensure parity of criteria. We believe that the request for such action also needs to come from the President of APAC.
We endorse the notion of a Justice and Peace award to be presented triennially. We believe that it should allow provinces and congregations the ability to showcase one or more of their institutions or communities or individuals (lay or religious) across the APAC region. The award itself is an honour but the communication of effective work in the fields of justice would be the greater outcome. The Commission is happy to seek nominations in late 2007 for the 2008 APAC Convention or to let the Executive Council seek such nominations.
STUDENT EXCHANGES
We will ask Trish McGrath (Villanova College AFAS) to document the Australian Filipino Augustinian experiences of exchange of teachers and of the exposure experiences for Brisbane students in the Philippines. At this stage we would look for schools to reflect on the suggestion of exchanges both inside the Philippines and beyond and to develop a series of outcomes that would be sought from such experiences. In early 2007 Fr Tony will write to each of the schools in the APAC family seeking such reflection.
UN PARTICIPATION
Fr Brian will seek to gather and disseminate information on this underutilised resource. The Commission will then attempt to formulate an action plan through internet contact among Commission members.
APAC PROJECT
We wish to explore the possibility of a common APAC project, in the line of the AIDS project in Nairobi. Fr Tony will ask all leadership teams in APAC to dream of such a project beyond their own individual projects and to outline possible new projects, their requirements for human and financial resources, and the possible outcomes sought from such a project. The results of such dreaming will be shared with the Commission members and the Executive Council.
Fr Tony is asked to include the possibility of Volunteer youth projects and communities in Asia / Pacific and the development of Kolping projects as seed material for dreaming of such a project.
YOUTH COMMISSION
The minutes of this meeting will be sent to Fr Joel Santiago of the Youth Commission so that he can feel free to seek our help with the projects of the Youth Commission.
The meeting concluded at 12:20pm
Brian Fitzpatrick O.S.A.
Province Social Justice
Coordinator.
