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Stay tuned to see where we are going for Spring Break & May 2025 Immersions!

Student Coordinator Applications will go out at the end of the Spring 2024 semester!

Upcoming Immersions

Focus: Major themes of this immersion include simple living, mountaintop removal and the ecological crisis, the effects on the coal mining industry, the history of Appalachia and the movement of unions and miners, the health effects and concerns of the region, the culture of community, etc. It is a great cross section of how different social justice issues impact one another. Partner Organization: Our community partner for this immersion is the Appalachian Catholic Worker Farm outside Spencer, West Virginia, just north of Charleston. ACW describes the experience they offer students as being one-third service, one-third education, and one-third reflection. Learn more details at https://www.acwfarm.com/.

Uncovering and Exploring the Heart of Appalachia (Spencer, West Virginia)

May 2024

Overview: Our work for the week will be to offer medical services and medications to those who are very poor. Ideally, participants will be students from all majors and alumni doctors and nurses. Medical professionals from the Cleveland community are also invited to provide care to the people of Honduras and act as mentors to our pre-health students. We expect to participate in a number of medical brigades where simple diagnoses are made and medicines are distributed. We will also work on public health mapping projects by identifying the locations of various transportation patterns, water supplies, clinics, and diseases. By understanding the relationships between geography and the local people, we can better serve the people of rural Honduras both in the present and future Immersions.

Medical Brigade and Public Health Immersion (Honduras)

May 2024

Overview: Our partner for this immersion, the Br. David Darst Center in Chicago, serves as an experiential learning space to build community, work with local partner agencies, dig into reflection on injustices and their root causes, and create action plans to address those injustices. Community comes through shared time cooking and cleaning meals, storytelling, and practicing values of hospitality, inclusion, and stewardship as a group. Through partnerships with local agencies, retreat participants are able to get to know people in Chicago directly impacted by injustices, challenge societal stereotypes, and break down barriers that continue to perpetuate inequity and indifference. The Darst Center focus on the intertwined nature of injustices in our programming by highlighting the systems of homelessness, food insecurity, incarceration, education, and immigration. Through various activities and group dialog, we reflect on the underlying causes of what we see at partner agencies, and we discern our own responsibility and action plans going forward.

Navigating Inequities at the Intersections (Chicago, IL)

May 2024

Dates: TBD but likely May 21st - May 30th

Cost: $2,500

Student Coordinators: Mia Urbani and Chase Hudock

Data Assistant: Katie Vasiliauskas

Overview: Honduras is a beautiful and mountainous Central American country with lush greenery. Once part of Spain’s vast empire in the New World, Honduras became an independent nation in 1821. After two and a half decades of mostly military rule, a freely-elected civilian government came to power in 1982. Honduras is one of the 10 poorest countries in the Western Hemisphere with GDP per capita at U.S. $4,200 per year (2010). The economy has continued to grow slowly but the distribution of wealth remains very polarized with average wages remaining low. 65% of the population lives below the poverty line. It is estimated that there are more than 1.2 million people who are unemployed, the rate of unemployment standing at 27.9%. 

Our work for the week will be to offer medical services to those who are very poor. Ideally, participants will be students preparing to enter the medical field or public health and alumni doctors and nurses. Medical professionals from the Cleveland community are also invited to provide care to the people of Honduras and act as mentors to our pre-health students. We expect to participate in a number of medical brigades where simple diagnoses are made and medicines are distributed. We will also work on public health mapping projects by identifying the locations of various transportation patterns, water supplies, clinics, and diseases. By understanding the relationships between geography and the local people, we can better serve the people of rural Honduras both in the present and future Immersions.

In addition, we will be visiting some of the other ministries of Sociedad such as Flor Azul, a farm for boys that allows them to live productive lives and learn valuable skills. As we visit them and other people of Honduras it is important to convey that we are there to serve them and that we care about them. This is the most important service we will offer in Honduras.

Community Partner: Sociedad Amigos de los Niños was founded in 1966 by Sister Maria Rosa Leggol of the School Sisters of Saint Francis. The Mission of Sociedad Amigos de los Niños (SAN) is to provide a nurturing environment for the neglected and impoverished children of Honduras. Sociedad provides shelter, health care, education, training, and the opportunity to live in dignity to children and families ravaged by extreme poverty. SAN addresses their basic needs and at the same time creates the opportunities for each child and young person to acquire the necessary skills to enjoy a productive and meaningful life. From her own experience as an orphan, Sister Maria Rosa has always been concerned with the needs of the poor and has rescued and educated more than 35,000 children who today are productive citizens of Honduras. Perhaps the biggest project of Sociedad, and our host for the week, is the Nuevo Paraiso Community which is a small village about two hours from Tegucigalpa. This tiny village of 60 homes is a safe haven for those who are victims of extreme poverty and neglect. It is here that Sociedad Amigos de Los Niños helps them build their dreams one step at a time. Nuevo Paraiso offers a kindergarten for 60 children, an elementary school for 230, and a high school for 350 students. The Santa Rosa de Lima Medical Clinic attends 40,000 patients per year. In addition, there is a training center, soccer field, Cielos de Honduras brick factory, a plantain chip factory, and the beginnings of other micro-businesses.

Accommodations: In Nuevo Paraiso, participants will be staying in modest, but comfortable, accommodations which are designated for volunteers. Beds, linens, and pillows are provided as well as laundry service. Shared bathrooms and showers are available.

Honduran cooks will prepare three meals a day in Nuevo Paraiso. Hondurans demonstrate their affection for others through their cooking, andthey would appreciate hearing that you enjoyed your meal. We will also have the opportunity to dine in a Honduran restaurant during the trip and experience other aspects of the Honduran culture.

Dates: May 20th - May 26th

Cost: $700

Student Coordinators: Vlad Tchepak & Lily Earley

Overview: 

Appalachia is a cultural region in the eastern United States that stretches from southern New York to northern Alabama, Mississippi, and Georgia. Living among the beautiful Appalachian Mountains are approximately 25 million people who share a similar history and culture. People work as miners, mill hands, mountaineers, farmers, artisans and musicians, educators, machinists, and entrepreneurs. Unfortunately, the people have often been stereotyped as uneducated and isolated.

Although Appalachia has abundant natural resources, such as coal and timber, the people of Appalachia have always struggled with poverty and have not enjoyed long-term benefits from these industries which were developed during the industrial revolution. In recent years, Appalachia has diversified its industries and has largely joined the economy of the rest of the country, but it still lags behind in most economic indicators. The region also still struggles with access to health care and quality education.

Two landmark Catholic pastoral letters, This Land is Home to Me: A Pastoral Letter On Powerlessness and At Home in the Web of Life: A Pastoral Message on Sustainable Community, give a moving and poetic description of the beauty of the region and its exploitation for energy resources. Billions of dollars worth of coal have been removed from the area, largely by people who do not live on the land, resulting in the impoverishment of the Appalachian people and environmental damage.

The ACW Farm has a variety of community partners that Immersion participants may serve. Though the service site will be determined upon arrival, participants can expect to participate in a variety of service projects that may include community outreach, physical service and farm work, and education about the local area.

Partner Organization: Our community partner for this immersion is the Appalachian Catholic Worker Farm outside Spencer, West Virginia, just north of Charleston. ACW describes the experience they offer students as being one-third service, one-third education, and one-third reflection. Learn more details on the ACW website.

Accommodations: Participants will stay in rustic, communal housing on the grounds of the ACW farm. Meals will be simple and nourishing.

Additional Appalachia resources

Dates: May 20th - May 25th 

Cost: $1000

Student Coordinators: Sydney Burger & Hayden Bell

Overview: 

Our partner for this immersion, the Br. David Darst Center in Chicago, serves as an experiential learning space to build community, work with local partner agencies, dig into reflection on injustices and their root causes, and create action plans to address those injustices. Community comes through shared time cooking and cleaning meals, storytelling, and practicing values of hospitality, inclusion, and stewardship as a group. Through partnerships with local agencies, retreat participants are able to get to know people in Chicago directly impacted by injustices, challenge societal stereotypes, and break down barriers that continue to perpetuate inequity and indifference. The Darst Center focus on the intertwined nature of injustices in our programming by highlighting the systems of homelessness, food insecurity, incarceration, education, and immigration. Through various activities and group dialog, we reflect on the underlying causes of what we see at partner agencies, and we discern our own responsibility and action plans going forward.

This immersion will include visits to partner agencies, reflection activities, communal meals, and recreational time. Groups reside at the Darst Center in shared rooms, and we travel through the city via vans or buses provided by the group or via public transportation.

The Darst Center is here to create a unique experience for the immersion participants. With some flexibility and creativity, they work to ensure the retreat programming will impact the students and support their growth in nurturing a personal passion for social change. This immersion focuses on five 'burning issues' of injustice: homelessness, food insecurity, education, immigration, and incarceration. The Darst Center structures immersions in three main ways: 1) visits to our partner agencies, including both direct service options and experiential learning opportunities; 2) educational sessions and reflections designed to go deeper and extend the work and observations from partner agencies; 3) communal practices of shared meals, recreational time, and upkeep of our shared space.

The Darst Center works with both religious and secular schools and groups to shape immersion experiences that speak to the specific context and needs of the participants. Depending on the group's background, age range, and religious context, they offer a number of components for Immersion Retreats: videos and articles on our five burning issues, daily communal prayers, reflection activities and small group sharing, and opportunities to attend local events in Chicago related to current justice campaigns and efforts.

As the Darst Center wraps up a retreat with a group, they work to craft an action plan or accountability plan for participants to continue bringing what they have learned into their lives at home, school, faith community, and beyond. For schools within a shorter driving distance of Chicago, they are able to offer post-retreat workshops on campus for students to enrich their leadership skills to create social change at home.

Previous Immersions

Overview:

El Salvador Immersion is a faith-based delegation experience where participants learn from the Salvadoran people about their lives, histories, and hopes for the future. A major focus of the encounter is to reflect on the meaning of working for justice rather than working for charity; understanding one’s role as a global citizen; and humanizing the different issues that are present in our societies. Participants learn directly from the Salvadorans about issues such as the impact of war, neo-liberal economics, U.S. foreign policy, migration, mining, the environment, and a tradition of liberating faith.

Activities:

This Immersion will include: visits to martyr sites, grassroots organizations, and a rural community, as well as speakers on history, politics, economics, and more importantly current issues as well as time for shopping for Fair Trade crafts and cultural activities. 

We give special emphasis to the voice and experience of the poor and marginalized of El Salvador. Taking our inspiration from Monsignor Romero, we want to give voice to the voiceless. We encourage you to address with your group your level of interest in meeting with people who also represent more powerful groups and other sectors of society.

It is our desire to provide for your group the opportunity to learn from various political, social, economic and religious sectors according to the interests of the participants.

Accommodations: 

The group will stay in simple accommodations. Group members may need to sleep in sleeping bags on the floor but will have adequate usage of showers and toilets. Meals will be basic but sufficient, and there will be opportunities to try cultural cuisine.

Overview:

On this Immersion, partnered with CEPA (Catholic Ethical Purchasing Alliance), students will learn from the community, The Industrial Commons, and the Carolina Textile District for a week in Morganton, North Carolina. North Carolina is a large manufacturing region, and these organizations aim to uplift workers, care for the environment, and develop sustainable, profitable businesses. In each factory students visit, the workers are paid a living wage, work in a safe environment, and are given voice and agency. In the past, JCU students have participated in factory tours, visited a cotton farm and mill, participated in TIC’s Hometown Walkabout program, sewed their own bags from recycled textiles, learned about a circular economy, and more!

 

Here’s a video from JCU’s time in Spring 2022! 

Overview:

Do you love Fr. Greg Boyle and his book Tattoos on the Heart? If so this Immersion is the perfect experience to help you dive deeper into the life, work, and community of Boyle Heights, home of Dolores Mission Church in Los Angeles.

Dolores Mission addresses social injustices within the Boyle Heights community, a largely Latino community comprised of immigrant families. The community and its partners continue to navigate gang violence and homelessness on a daily basis. Learn more about Dolores Mission.

Overview:

Cuernavaca:  Known as the “City of Eternal Springtime” and the birthplace of revolutionary leader Emiliano Zapata, Cuernavaca is located two hours south of Mexico City in the state of Morelos.  CGEE’s study center is located near the city’s historic center, with a 16th century Cathedral and Hernan Cortés’ Palace.  The study center has dormitory style rooms, a dining room, a library, and classroom space.  When it opened in 1982, Cuernavaca was a focal point for the liberation theology movement under the late Bishop Sergio Mendez Arceo.  Since the establishment of industrial parks just to the south of Cuernavaca, the city has become a destination for poor farmers from neighboring states who seek factory work because they can no longer live off their land.  At the same time, affluent Mexicans from Mexico City own vacation homes in Cuernavaca. As a result of rapid industrialization and unplanned growth, the natural environment has deteriorated and one witnesses the extremes of abject poverty and great wealth side by side in Cuernavaca.     Amatlán de Quetzalcóatl:  Amatlán is a rural Nahua indigenous town in the state of Morelos about an hour outside of Cuernavaca that has organized to try to defend its cultural inheritance and indigenous spiritual legacy from outside exploitation.  It is a good option for a day excursion or for several days of homestays with local families. Participants can hike (30-45 minutes) to an ancient sacred site and learn about Nahua indigenous spirituality and cosmovision. Participants can experience an indigenous sweat lodge (temescal).  Residents share about the history of communal land and current struggles to defend it, as well as about the racism that the community has faced.  Others share about their experience as immigrants, working in the U.S. or being deported.

Click here to learn more about our program and partner 

Overview:

This January Campus Ministry is partnering with the Encuentro Project. The Encuentro Project offers participants a faith-based, multi-faceted immersion program in the El Paso-Ciudad Juarez border region to experience a deeper understanding of the complex migration reality and of this community. By providing education, service, activities, reflection, prayer and community, the Encuentro Project motivates participants to engage in peaceful, effective action for greater justice and compassion for migrants and refugee persons as presented in Catholic Social Teaching. The Encuentro Project hopes to provide experiences that transform the hearts and minds of participants and open new perspectives about forced migration and asylum seeking by vulnerable people. 

 

The program will provide a residence (single, double and multiple occupancy rooms; maximum capacity of 19) in central El Paso. During the stay, participants will be able to:

  • Encounter and minister to migrant, refugee or vulnerable immigrant persons, in shelters, guest houses and/or parishes
  • Visit with persons and organizations serving in the El Paso region
  • Visit with persons and organizations serving the Ciudad Juarez region (optional)
  • Participate in workshops on Catholic Social Teaching and migrant/border realities
  • Participate in personal and group reflection and regular community evening prayer
  • Live in community; longer term participants will have the independence needed to fulfill their program

Note: Though not essential, some fluency in Spanish would be beneficial.

 

Learn more at https://encuentroproject.org/

Overview: 

The Father McKenna Center offers a unique immersion opportunity for students and young people seeking to learn more about themselves and about the challenges facing some of the most vulnerable in our community. The Father McKenna Center is located on the basement level of the former St. Aloysius Church. St. Aloysius Parish ceased operations in 2012, but The Father McKenna Center continues to carry on the work of serving men experiencing homelessness and very low-income families in the neighborhoods surrounding the U.S. Capitol. Your experience will offer you the opportunity to serve meals, converse with and share meals with the men we serve. We are committed to making this an educational experience as well as a service opportunity.

What Will You Learn? 1. By connecting with our guests and patrons, you will learn about some of the challenges that those experiencing homelessness and poverty face. Many of our visitors have faced one or more of the following issues: addiction, mental illness, incarceration, or chronic unemployment. 2. You will learn that homelessness is not a condition, but a phase of life. For some it is a transient time, while for others homelessness can be nearly a permanent phase of life. 3. You will learn that anyone can experience homelessness. Experiencing homelessness or not, all deserve dignity and respect. 4. You will learn that you can make a difference in someone’s life by showing concern and interest, as much as through a handout of food, money or other tangible goods.

How Will You Learn? You and your peers will have plenty of opportunity to get to know the men we serve, and to join them for the daily group meeting that precedes our lunch meal. During that session, you may be asked to “interview” one of our guests and then introduce him to the group, and vice versa. You should also take the opportunity to learn from other local agencies that serve the homeless (the Coalition of Housing and Homeless Organizations [COHHO], the DC Fiscal Policy Institute or the Washington Legal Clinic for the Homeless). You might also meet with your local representative or a senator (or their senior staffers) to discuss what you have experienced and why you believe the government has a role to play in addressing the underlying issues that cause and exacerbate homelessness. You will also have an opportunity to learn from Cortez McDaniel, FMC’s Director of Services. You will have the opportunity to meet with him one-on-one, sit in on one of his meetings, and debrief about your experience with him. Having experienced homelessness himself, his wisdom is well worth getting to understand.

Your experience at the Father McKenna Center offers you an opportunity to serve, to learn and to listen. Your experience will change your heart and may change your life.