Living Mercy isn’t just about what we do – it’s about who we are. It is woven into our daily lives, shaping the character of every student who walks through our doors. We walk this path with our students, shaping young people of courage, compassion and conviction.
Sacred Heart students don’t just memorise our Mercy values, they live them each and every day, putting who we are as Mercy people into action. We raise awareness, advocate for the marginalised and continue the work of the Sisters of Mercy through hands-on learning that transforms how our students see the world.
Our House Mercy Works answers two urgent calls – the Cry of the Earth and the Cry of the Poor. Each of the four Houses focuses on a specific organisation, exploring it and understanding its needs to advocate for and fundraise throughout the year. By tethering each House to a particular organisation, students can articulate not just what the organisation does, but why its existence is vital to the community or the world, transforming passive charity into active, empathetic global citizenship. Through this we build students' skills to become informed leaders of change.
Caritas: Project Compassion
Project Compassion is Caritas Australia’s annual Lenten fundraising and awareness-raising appeal. As a College we come together in solidarity with the world’s poor to help end poverty, promote justice and uphold dignity. Project Compassion is a College focus for Term One.
St Vinnies and Bayleaf Community Kitchen
Students support St Vinnies and the Bayleaf Community Kitchen by collecting donations for Christmas hampers for families that would go without over the Christmas season. All mentor groups provide a hamper.
Offspring
Offspring is a social enterprise that provides holistic care to young women rescued from human trafficking in Kolkata. Their focus is on four key areas: employment (vocational training), education, empowerment and providing safe places to live (community hubs).
Catholic Care: Settle Well Program
Geelong Settle Well is an intensive, school-based support service for Young Refugees and Asylum Seekers. It provides support to Refugee Youth, giving them a stronger start in life.
We All Rotate
This organisation aims to provide water security and dignity sanitation packs to Nepalese communities, as well as child sponsorship. Students raise funds to sponsor five Nepalese girls to attend school.
Indigenous Projects
Our Indigenous Projects are spread across Australia and focus on education to empower our newest and oldest members of society.
Diocesan Livelihoods Program in Kiunga in Papua New Guinea (PNG)
The Diocesan Livelihoods Program, in partnership with the Diocese of Daru-Kiunga, aims to improve the living standards of people, mainly West Papuan refugees, who have resettled in Iowara and along the Down Fly River (Border villages near Indonesia).
Timor: Educational Support
Students support educational programs in Timor, including teaching courses, women’s empowerment initiatives and the development of resources and facilities.
McAuley Community Services for Women
This organisation provides services for women and their children who are escaping family violence and who are homeless.
ACRATH
ACRATH is committed to working towards the elimination of human trafficking in Australia, the Asia Pacific region and globally.
Bahay Tuluyan Philippines Australia (BTPA)
BTPA is a children’s rights organisation that looks to build the capacity of partner organisations in the Philippines to work with children living in poverty. They do this through education, advocacy, volunteering and sustainable development programs.
We have adopted a Service Learning approach – informed by the work of Br Damien Price – to develop intentional encounters that explicitly teach our Catholic identity and Mercy values. These opportunities are mapped across the learning journey of a Sacred Heart student, providing increased challenge and opportunities for practical service and giving.
Each year level represents a distinct step in this formation. The culmination of this journey ensures our students emerge as outward-thinking, globally empathetic and socially responsible individuals who radiate God’s love and Mercy to all.
In Term Four all Year 7 students participate in The Joy Project: Be the Light of Christ. This project is one of several Service Learning experiences students encounter on their Mercy Centred Learning Journey. Each encounter provides an opportunity to explicitly teach about our Catholic identity and Mercy values.
As a cohort, students work together to produce handmade toys, gifts and food items that are then donated. Bringing the joy of Christmas to the Geelong Community.
The Joy Project is in partnership with MacKillop Family Services and Bay Leaf Community Kitchen.
All Year 8 students complete a semester of Outreach. This program aims to explicitly teach students about our Catholic Identity call and Mercy values. These units also provide students with an opportunity to put their learning into action and gain practical skills for volunteering and contributing positively and constructively to our community.
As the program develops, the aim is to provide a wide range of outreach opportunities. This program currently includes the following initiatives: students providing nourishing, supportive meals and cooked items to those in need; visiting the elderly to learn about isolation and the need for community and connectedness; and, finally, addressing environmental issues that allow students to investigate the links between the earth and human justice.
The program aims to provide students with practical skills and experience in carrying out merciful justice outside normal school structures, so as to build our students into people of action and mercy who are capable and willing to continue merciful actions once they leave the support of the College.
The Year 9 Community Project is an MYP IB unit designed to call our students to serve others. The guiding scripture for this unit, ‘He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God’ (Micah 6:8) is coupled with a guiding question: how can we bear compassionate witness to the innate dignity of others? In class, students unpack what it means to bear witness and what innate dignity means.
The Community Project provides an applied opportunity for students to be outwardly facing and responsive to others' needs. The student’s capacity and agency to enact positive change are encouraged and celebrated in the hope of future personally driven engagement and service work.
iGEN Learning, the Intergenerational Education Nexus, is a collaboration among ministries to deliver a meaningful intergenerational program that connects Year 10 students with residents at Mercy Place Rice Village.
iGEN seeks to be an innovative program that meaningfully combines education and aged care, living out the Mercy Charism, notably through service, hospitality, compassion and respect. The program works to change the perspectives and approaches to personal growth, age-related stereotypes and the connection between education and real-world vocations.
Year 10 students engage in this course for one semester as part of the Religious Education program. Students participate in a range of learning activities to prepare for onsite visits, complete reflective journals and engage in the full process of planning, implementing and reviewing their own intergenerational programs. Students complete the semester with a certificate through Dementia Training Australia.
Year 11 students establish a consistent commitment to community service. Each Wednesday afternoon, they dedicate their time to Feed Me Geelong, working alongside volunteers to support their vital mission.
Students are actively involved in the core operations, including packing food hampers, managing incoming deliveries, sorting and restocking the marketplace, decanting dry goods and unpacking essential grocery donations.
Their weekly efforts are invaluable to the organisation's ability to serve the local community.
Year 12 students complete a Mercy in Action Project as part of their Year 12 Religious Education program. The objective is to demonstrate acts of mercy throughout the community.
Students select a merciful initiative for their project that reflects their own personal passions, concerns or interests. These projects take many forms, including spending time at animal shelters, selling items (both pre-owned and handmade) to raise money for various charities, assisting with environmental projects, volunteering with Social Justice organisations and more, resulting in numerous benefits across Geelong and the wider community.
This project helps shape our students into people of action and Mercy who are capable and willing to continue their merciful actions once they leave Sacred Heart.
Outreach is more than an extracurricular activity. It is a way of life embedded throughout our curriculum, putting Mercy into action, walking in the footsteps of the Sisters of Mercy and truly living out the Sacred Heart Way.
The enduring call to action, echoing the words of Pope Leo and Catherine McAuley's mission, drives our students to respond deliberately to the needs of the poor and marginalised in every context. As people of Mercy, we are compelled to actively work toward restoring human dignity. This sustained commitment to outreach transforms students and staff into visible, active embodiments of Mercy.
This experience provides a vital grounding in justice and service that ensures students continue to live out this mission long after they leave the Sacred Heart gates, instilling a desire to be catalysts for positive change both at home and across the world. Our initiatives extend across all year levels and programs, ensuring that all students have opportunities to serve.
Student volunteers help serve parishioners' morning tea for a small donation following the 9.00am Sunday Mass at St Mary’s Basilica. This is then forwarded to the Viqueque community in Timor-Leste.
Café Light aims to strengthen community connections in the St Mary’s Parish and support our community partners in Viqueque.
In the lead-up to Christmas, every Mentor Group creates hampers filled with food and gifts, ensuring that the spirit of generosity remains at the heart of our community.
The Year 8 cohort collates these hampers, which are then delivered to help individuals and families within our College community experience additional joy at Christmas and to let them know that they are in our thoughts and prayers.
Students and staff from Sacred Heart, St Joseph's College, Clonard, Iona College and St Ignatius work with the community agency, Cultura, to provide a day of fun and friendship for children from refugee backgrounds. This event runs for one day during the school holidays, with each day different and includes a range of activities and a community-shared BBQ lunch.
This initiative is a powerful example of collaborative social justice in action. Through fun and friendship, students move from theory to practice, embodying the Mercy and Gospel values by creating a culture of inclusion and joy for Geelong’s newest residents.
Visiting the East Geelong Cemetery and our College Cemetery offers students a profound connection to our foundations. They are able to pay their respects to the Sisters of Mercy, reflect on times gone by, engage in conversation, ask questions, say prayers, care for the area around the graves and lay flowers in remembrance. It is a gesture of profound respect and gratitude for the Sisters of Mercy, whose vision and sacrifice established the vibrant College community we enjoy today.
Running twice a Term, students from St Thomas Aquinas School in Norlane and St Francis Xavier School in Corio visit Sacred Heart for an afternoon of learning and connection.
Activities are led by our students and staff and include experiences they can’t easily access at their schools, such as cooking, science lab activities, dance and yoga.
This program provides young primary students the opportunity to visit our College and build relationships to support them as they move into secondary school. These activities provide a practical application of the Mercy values of service and hospitality. Our students move from being learners to being mentors, building their confidence and communication skills.
The Healing Hearts Program is a compassionate initiative that supports the Pastoral Healthcare Network Australia (PHNA).
Healing Hearts are small felt hearts given to people in need of support during times of grief, loss or suffering. Receiving the Healing Heart serves as a physical reminder that the person is not alone and is being held in the thoughts and prayers of our community. By handcrafting these symbols of love, students learn that the smallest gesture, when wrapped in Mercy, can provide immense strength to those navigating the darkness of grief and loss.
At the start of Term One and Three, each Mentor Group is asked to donate non-perishable pantry items, which will then go to some of the most disadvantaged families in the Geelong region.
The Food Drive honours the Mercy tradition of practical service. Catherine McAuley didn’t just pray for the poor; she provided a comfortable cup of tea and a place to stay. Our Food Drive is the modern equivalent of her legacy, offering a practical, immediate and dignified response to a neighbour in need.
Our students travel to St Thomas Aquinas School in Norlane, where they engage with and support students in developing positive social skills through simple group-based activities led by Sacred Heart students and supported by St Thomas Aquinas staff. This program fosters a reciprocal exchange of joy and social growth, empowering our students to lead with empathy while providing mentorship and social support to younger students.
Wexford Tutoring bring together students from Sacred Heart and staff from Northern Bay College to provide literacy and numeracy support to newly arrived refugee students at the Wexford Campus of Northern Bay College.
When our students step into the role of a tutor, they transition from passive consumers of information to active facilitators of knowledge. This shift offers profound cognitive, professional and personal advantages that go far beyond helping someone out.
Our Immersion Programs take this learning into the world. Students elect to study the Immersion as a semester-long subject. This ensures they have the knowledge and emotional preparation to walk alongside our global brothers and sisters. Upon their return, students debrief on their journey and lessons learned to develop actions to support the community they visited.
The Dadirri First Nations Immersion is a Religious Education subject that students in Years 9 and 10 can apply for. This immersion provides a profound opportunity to learn from Aboriginal communities. It is a time for listening, experiencing cultural traditions and contributing to vital service projects.
The Sacred Ecology Immersion in Far North Queensland is also an Immersion students in Years 9 and 10 can select as their Religious Education program. This immersion focuses on conservation and environmental stewardship, from rainforest regeneration to turtle rehabilitation.
In 2027 we are offering the Camino Way Immersion, a pilgrimage that takes travellers on a journey of self-discovery through the ancient and beautiful villages and countryside of Spain.
The Camino de Santiago (translated to English as The Way of St. James) is a massive, interconnected network of ancient pilgrimage routes stretching across Europe, all converging at the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela in northwest Spain.
For over 1200 years, people have walked these paths. What started in the early 9th century as a deeply religious Catholic pilgrimage has evolved into one of the world's most famous multi-week trekking experiences, attracting over 500,000 global travellers every year.
This unit provides students with a unique opportunity to seek truth, make meaning and to participate in a living story. The objectives of this unit are designed to have real-world application and to allow for in-depth investigation of culture, faith and personal purpose.
Students will:
This unit includes a 12-day immersion in Baucau, Timor-Leste. As part of the immersion, students will visit and work at our community partner school, CTIT, which is overseen by the Conosian Sisters. They will also visit the Venilale orphanage, overseen by the Salesian Sisters.
Discover how our College community puts Mercy in action. Click below to explore the Mission and Ministry team's 2025 key achievements and contributions. This report highlights our enduring dedication to social justice whilst celebrating the activities that empower our students and staff to challenge injustice and serve as leaders in our local and global communities.
