Lasallian Service
De La Salle offers a highly organised social service programme designed to develop the attitude of being “men for others” assisting other people as “brothers” and “sisters” and having the same human dignity as ourselves.
The Lasallian Service is about concern for others especially the poor, the underprivileged, the less empowered, the unemployed, the disabled, the elderly, the sick and the lonely.
Social service, in De La Salle terms, means taking 12 young men with no special building skills to spend a month in a small rural village in India to build homes for 12 families; it means taking 16 young men into a remote village in PNG to help refurbish the school; it means taking students and teachers to school in outback Australia to teach and learn with and from the indigenous students there.
“Coolies” rather than “Schoolies” is an end of school activity, with a twist, for year 12 students. Volunteer students act as “coolies”, unskilled labourers, building houses in a rural village in India. The program was established to support the work of Br James Kimpton, an English brother committed to looking after abandoned children in the Theni district of Tamil Nadu, India.
Year 11 students are offered the opportunity to spend 3 weeks at Mainohana High School, conducted by the De La Salle brothers, near Bereina Village about 160kms from Post Moresby in PNG. The school has 600 students including boarders, to be a boarder the student must live more than 2 hours walk for the school. In 2007 De La Salle students refurbished the kitchen which had been destroyed by fire and built a house.
Balgo Hills is a remote mission of the De La Salle Brothers servicing an indigenous community of the Kukatja people in the Kimberly Region. The Brothers run the local school which is vital to the whole community. The annual Balgo Lasallian Summer Program gives young people the opportunity to visit Balgo Hills and work as part of the community for two weeks. Volunteers share their experience with the local young people in the community providing them with recreation activities and stimulation during the summer holidays. De La Salle teachers are given the opportunity to work there as a support to regular staff and a cultural exchange program for some Balgo and De La Salle year 9 and 10 students is being established.