The Ateneo de Zamboanga University as a Jesuit School has always been motivated to continuously mold the Ateneo community to become men and women for other by advocating the orientation of awareness to social issues, deep concern for the need of others and the strong desire to be involved in community upliftment and social change. This is all evident in the programs of the Social Awareness and Community Service Involvement Office (SACSI).
Mandated to further intensify the University’s service orientation, SACSI acts as a bridge between the school community and the social realities happening outside the school. The Volunteer Program (VP) is responsible for conducting the Immersion Program is held in the different marginalized communities in Mindanao. This program is offered to students on a voluntary basis.
Program Objectives
The Program is specifically designed to:
- Provide participants with the awareness, exposure and involvement in the lifestyle of the marginalized sectors of our society;
- enable the participants to witness and/or experience the living conditions in depressed communities;
- enable participants to experience working with and being conscious of the underprivileged forces of the society;
- give the participants the opportunities to reflect through theological sessions on what they can possibly undertake or contribute in responding to social issues and problem and;
- to inculcate in the participants a deeper understanding of education as an important tool in social transformation.
The two-week Immersion Program consists of a three-day Basic Orientation Seminar (BOS), a one-week Immersion Proper, and a three-day Synthesis Seminar.
THE ROAD NOT TAKEN
Two roads diverges in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference
– Robert Frost
