World As One

Mission Statement:

Our World As One program cultivates international relationships in a Christ-centered learning environment. Students develop an understanding and respect for one another's beliefs, backgrounds and cultures, creating a lifelong community that values and continuously advocates justice and peace in the world.

We welcome international students into our school family and what a great experience this is. In 2003, six students from Germany, Slovakia, Japan, Lebanon and Spain joined us. Since then, about 10 to 15 international students arrive each Autumn to live with host families and attend school.

We also have an exchange with two Jesuit High Schools-one in Spain, one in Belgium.

In September, Spanish students from Barcelona (CASP) spend three weeks living with a host family and attending SJJ. In return, the host "brothers" go to Barcelona in the spring and attends school at CASP. This spring we will host students from Brussels, Belgium St. Michel Jesuit School.

This sort of thing is not uncommon in the Jesuit tradition. For more than 450 years, the community has been educating young men. Indeed, there are 458 Jesuit secondary schools and 84 colleges and universities all over the world.

We choose to educate young men from other cultures both for what we can do for them and what they do for our students and school community.

We do our best to help them feel at home, including finding families willing to host them for the school year. To find out more about the program, please e-mail Susie Beeman or call 419.865.5743 ext. 313.

If you'd like some contact with one of our international students, but aren't able to serve as a host family, invite them to your home or to an event. These young men are here for a long time without their families, so the kindness you extend is appreciated. We all benefit from this very real lesson that the world is indeed one.

Below, students from the World As One program play football at the 6th annual World As One potlock picnic. It's a time when the host families and the international students come to our house for an end of the year gathering.