2025 Immersion Application
The Immersion application for the Summer of
2025 opens on November 8. The priority application deadline
was Friday, November 15. Applications are open until all spaces
are filled, please speak with Mrs. Fuentes to learn more.
2025 Experiences
Financial aid is available for students currently receiving
tuition assistance. If cost is the only factor preventing
participation in immersion, please contact the Office of Service
and Justice to have a conversation. We want all interested,
qualified students to be able to participate in this
program.
The locations are as follows:
With the mission of “transforming lives through building courts
and cultural exchange,” each project is unique. Help build a
court with a unique community with its history, strengths,
and needs partnering with a distinctive group of volunteers
who live, work, and engage in cultural activities with the
community for one week. Cost: $2900
Camp ReCreation – Eagle Lake, CA
Volunteers spend the week working in a 1-to-1 ratio with a camper
with a developmental disability. Camp ReCreation is staffed
entirely by volunteers who generously share their time, energy,
and talents to provide experiences and memories for our friends
who are too often marginalized by their communities. Cost:
$200
Students work with residents and organizations in the coastal
towns of Smith River, Fort Dick, and Crescent City as well as, at
times, inland in Hiouchi and Gasquet. Because Del Norte County’s
poverty rate is more than 20 percent and is one of the poorest
counties in the State, we work with the entire community,
including some families who are tribal members. Most of our work
is locally led in partnership with community-based organizations,
although some projects will focus on typical SSP home repairs.
Volunteers will rotate through community-based projects, many of
which have an environmental focus. Cost: $1100
We will partner with the L’Arche Tahoma Hope Community, spending
time working alongside core community members with intellectual
disabilities on the community farm, learning about disability
justice and socializing with the members of the community.
Housing is provided on-site. Cost: $1150
The Br. David Darst Center provides transformative social justice
immersion experiences grounded in the Lasallian tradition and
Catholic Social Teaching. Through the programs and
partnerships with local community organizations, participants
gain a deeper understanding of the complex realities of injustice
and obtain tools to take action. They seek to inspire an active
and engaged faith, a commitment to serve, and a passion for
social change. Cost: $1700
This Jesuit apostolate works to provide humanitarian aid to
recently deported migrants, advocate for policy change (in the
U.S., Mexico, and beyond) that impacts migration, and educate
about the complexities of immigration. Students provide service
through meal service and accompaniment of migrants through
conversation. Students also meet with ranchers, border patrol
officers, and participants in the court system (attorneys,
judges) for dialogue with people impacted by migration and for
reflection on their experience and response. Cost: $1750
We will be living simply and giving our time and energy to help
others, primarily with home maintenance and repair, so that they
may have adequate shelter and avoid code violations. The
Jerusalem Farm community, which provides our housing, is led by
an alumnus of Jesuit High School. Cost: $1800
What is an Immersion?
Our service immersion program offers rising Seniors an
opportunity to put their faith into action in a particular way.
The service experiences are about responding to the Gospel call
to serve those in need, while questioning the reasons behind why
people are in need. Service is a tool for creating spaces for
kinship and solidarity. While each immersion has its own unique
focus, they all encourage participants to live in solidarity with
people experiencing acute needs like hunger, homelessness,
physical or developmental disability, isolation due to old age or
illness, or dislocation due to migration. Experiencing community,
simplicity, justice, and prayer is central to the immersion
experience.
Each immersion has goals which are modeled on tenets of the
Jesuit Volunteer Corps program:
- Engaging in direct service with the people of the community
that welcomes us;
- Living simply, while in community with fellow students and
people of the host community;
- Reflecting on social justice and Catholic Social Teaching
issues pertinent to the community we are visiting;
- Reflecting through prayer at the end of each day as a means
of noticing where and how God was acting throughout the day, and,
further, how God invites us to respond.
