One Love, One Heart, One Vision

- Walking Together Into The Heart

Day 5

Morning prayer was prepared by our participants from PNG. It included a hymn to Our Lady of the Sacred Heart and spontaneous prayers from the participants.

The focus of today is ways of embedding the charism in our schools. Firstly we looked at the Stages of Development, in order that our practice be informed by the ways that people learn.

We had the opportunity to become familiar with the OLSH Proclamation for Schools. In particular we looked at the Pillars of OLSH education and each country group discussed four important values in their schools.

We discussed ways of keeping the values before the eyes of the school community....
After lunch we gathered our thoughts, as it was the final day of presentations by Liz Taylor and Lee Toll. We also gathered all the resources we had received and made notes regarding the ways we could use them.

Sharing of culture that evening was from Indonesia.

We saw a beautiful dance from West Java, performed by Sr Albertine, Sr Angeline and Sr Benedicta.

Sr Madeleine	Sr Albertine

We saw a DVD of the different Provinces which make up Indonesia and noting the special characteristics of each area. The Catholic population of Indonesia is 7 million, which is about 3 percent of the population.
We became aware of the different religions which are practiced in Indonesia including Hinduism, Islam, Buddhism and Catholicism.
Agung performed a monologue for us. We heard that this show normally is performed from late night to early morning. Our edition was a five minute sample. The puppets used were very beautiful and finely decorated.

Sr Madeleine explained about the education situation in Indonesia. FDNSC has establishes an educational foundation, named ASTI  DHARMA. The school system consists of Kindergarten, Elementary School,  Junior  High School and Senior High School. The sisters have many schools throughout Indonesia including vocational schools as well as those previously mentioned.
The sisters have schools in Java and the Moluccas, but only two kindergartens in West Papua so far.  In total, there are 9600 students in the schools run by the sisters. There are currently 53 sisters working in the OLSH schools in Indonesia, a few as principals, more as teachers and others working in finance.

Some of the difficulties facing the sisters include:

• People see Catholic schools as expensive
• Public schools are free and often preferred
• There are a number of International Schools starting up near our schools
• The number of students registering in the schools is decreasing. Last year in fact, one of the junior high schools was closed for lack of numbers.

A common theme reported on regarding all our schools is that the student graduation rate is high and the quality of the education provided is high. The education provided is well regarded by the community.

We saw a DVD of the schools and facilities and activities...truly remarkable! We saw Girl Scouts, traditional dancing, bands, sport, retreat, computer classes, painting, violin lessons, donations at Christmas, sport competitions, raising of the flag, outward bound, volleyball, field trips, games, science experiments, guitar lessons, traditional dancing, hockey, procession of Our Lady of the Sacred Heart, language laboratory classes, physics lessons, Red Cross Team, flag hoisting, altar boys and girls, sack races, vocational schools. The final caption was We are from many countries but we are of one heart! We concluded the sharing with a DVD of traditional dancing from the place where Mr Simon is from in Ambon.

We each received a beautiful gift, for which we were very grateful! The gifts included pretty batik backpacks and carry bags.

Questions and answers:

• In a Catholic or other private school the students must pay fees.
• In big cities International Schools are becoming popular with those parents who can afford to pay. They follow an international curriculum and hence are attractive to parents.
• When children finish in our kindergartens in West Papua they can continue in Government Schools.

Warm wishes from the APA participants