Finally, after two and a half years, The Office of Educational Services hosted the ACTION Student Leader-ship Workshop in person!

This year’s ACTION workshop included seventy adults and students who came from the following schools: All Hallows, Bergen Catholic, Brother Rice, Bloomfield Hills, Brother Rice Chicago, Catholic Memorial, Col-legio Cardenal Newman, Damien Memorial, Iona Preparatory, O’Dea, St. Thomas More Collegiate, Stella Maris, and Vancouver College.

During our first evening together students began with prayer and ice breakers. As they began talking with one another they quickly recognized their link to one another through the life and ministry of Blessed Edmund Rice.

As each day progressed students, ACTION Team Members, and Moderators, worked together to un-derstand the Pope’s call to care for a common home. However, the focus at this year’s ACTION workshop was on moving into the work of advocacy. The final goal is for students to lead their school into taking a deeper look into a particular service project and explore the systemic causes for the service, and then advocate for change. For example, if our service is to clean up a our local beach, why do we continue to year after year to need to perform this service? Can we stop the pollution? How?

A key component of this year’s workshop was on the idea of marketing and coalition building. ACTION par-ticipants will spend this school year marketing their service projects in order to engage administration, fac-ulty, staff and community in working for change. Throughout the year, ACTION students will meet on Zoom to share progress and best practices. Our next Zoom gathering will be in December.

The Office of Educational Services is grateful to the faculty members who have committed to assisting these students in their efforts to make the world a better place. Well done!