Prophetic Voices – Student Forum
Good Samaritan Education’s Prophetic Voices initiative provides students across our ten schools with a platform for dialogue and discernment to explore causes, projects, and issues they are passionate about, embodying Good Samaritan Benedictine tradition with the aim of promoting ongoing dialogue across the whole GSE community.
There are two main components to Prophetic Voices; the sharing of encounters and justice projects that happen at individual schools, to learn from each other’s experiences and the collaboration across the schools on current issues.
Each year the cohort chooses issues they want to learn about and encounter at a deeper level so that they can be active in taking a position on current issues of justice and compassion. Students’ passion and commitment will provide momentum for dialogue and learning. Throughout the year, experts will be invited to present at the online gatherings that run once each term to provide context for the students to kickstart exploration and reflection on the cohort’s chosen issues. The program then culminates with a two-day in-person gathering where students together discern a response in the form of a position statement.
The Prophetic Voices program initially arose during GSE’s 2022 Triennial Conference. It was an explicit initiative to recognise students as co-creators of GSE and harness their voices to capture and inform priorities, decision making and actions. Following the success of the 2022 program, the GSE Governing Council identified, as a priority, the need to retain a direct connection to the voice of students. It acknowledged the energy and power of a prophetic voice as a disruptor to ensure GSE is alerted to the issues that are front of mind for our students and that, as a community we find ways to respond.
The student’s exploration of issues of concern provides a further opportunity and pathway for engagement with neighbour, inviting further dialogue and discernment with the whole of the GSE. We hope to be inspired, unsettled, and grounded by the prophetic voices of our GSE students.
