AT ST ANNE’S COLLEGE, A CATHOLIC DIALOGUE SCHOOL, STUDENTS FROM DIVERSE BACKGROUNDS COME TOGETHER TO ENGAGE IN MEANINGFUL CONVERSATIONS AND ACTIVITIES THAT PROMOTE COMPASSION, SOCIAL JUSTICE AND COMMUNITY SPIRIT.
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St Anne’s College is a Catholic dialogue school, meaning it’s not just for those of the Catholic faith, it welcomes people from all backgrounds, culturally and religiously.
Religious education leader Elizabeth Holligan says modern Catholic schools present themselves to their communities through a Catholic ethos.
“So the way that we interact with each other, following Jesus’s teachings of love, is with compassion and kindness, and also peace and joy,” Elizabeth said.
“So that that generosity is there in our dealings with people and that dignity is at the foresight of everything we do as well.
“We have students from many different faith backgrounds here — a dialogue school is where we encourage that dialogue between the different faith traditions with the students and the people of no faith backgrounds, so we can hopefully end up in a world where there’s less aggression.”
These days, most Catholic schools in Australia are dialogue schools.
In the name of social justice, St Anne’s College chooses organisations to support each year and creates awareness of the work they do with their students and wider community.
Depending on what the supported organisation requests, the college will either raise funds or awareness for its cause, in the hope that, as students grow older, they might be inclined to work or volunteer in those areas.
This year, St Anne’s raised more than $4000 for Caritas Australia, a charity that works in Australia and overseas with vulnerable communities affected by natural disasters, conflict and displacement.
Last year, the school raised more than $3500 towards the Shepparton South conference of St Vincent de Paul.
“Our kids have been amazing in the diversity of activities they have taken part in,” Elizabeth said.
“Our Grade 5s ran stalls doing face-painting, ran a mini disco, just the range of activities we had run by the community action team, which is our social justice group, was great.
“It’s the students driving it, because it’s useless if adults come along and go, ‘I want you to do this, I’ve decided this is going to be good’.
“It’s very much a case of educating the students in what’s happened to other people and then the students being discerning and considering what they can do, how they can do it and who they can help, so they come up with ideas that they workshop and then they do a variety of things.
“We’ve had footy socks day, pyjama day, ice-buckets thrown, a little Christmas market.”
Once, the students ran a water relay to shine a light on people in other parts of the world who have to cart water for many kilometres every day.
“They had a water pump pumping water from the dam into buckets, then they had to fill up a big container and did a water relay to do it,” Elizabeth said.
“The actual physical activity of learning this wasn’t as easy as just giving cash was that awareness part of it, learning that some kids have to do this every single day.”
Elizabeth also teaches religious education at the college and leads community religious education as part of St Mel’s Parish.
She runs Masses and liturgies and facilitates sacraments.
“A lot of students in the region are a part of the St Mel’s Parish, but don’t go to a Catholic school, so they come to St Anne’s for sessions at night,” Elizabeth said.
Earlier this year, Elizabeth took three St Anne’s students to Beechworth for a few days for the Sandhurst Social Justice Leaders camp to attend a series of workshops.
“A lot of what we do is we give students the opportunity to get the strength and the courage to step forward when they’re older and speak in front of others,” Elizabeth said.
“To participate, to do things with others, to lead others in the hope that once they leave us they’re those people that are going to do great things in the future, to be the change we need.”
Elizabeth said when St Anne’s College held a Year 12 Graduation Mass for its first ever graduates recently, it was an exciting moment.
“Every year has been a challenge for them,” she said.
“They started in 2019, then 2020 and 2021 and 2022 were COVID, so this group has had an unusual secondary experience, but we tried to give them a fantastic going away.
“We invited all of our community into our sacred space and we invite them to participate, and if they’re not comfortable participating, we welcome their presence among us because they are our community and we can’t exclude people just because of religion; that’s why we end up with all the aggression in the world.”
Elizabeth said the goal was to nurture the heart, mind and soul of every student.
In theology, St Anne was Jesus Christ’s grandmother, Mary’s mother.
“The idea of having St Anne is because of that grandmotherly love that people surround themselves with,” she said.
“We’re here to support, encourage and love that child to see who they grow into; that confident comfortable person who can go out into the world and change things.”
