By Fr. Bernie Graham, SDB

Melbourne, Australia - From 6 to 8 August 2015, about 75 educational leaders from all the Salesian schools in the Province met in Melbourne for their biennial Salesian Educational Leaders Conference. Represented were the key educational leaders from the nine schools in Australia and the two in Samoa.

In this Bicentennial year, a week before the actual 200th anniversary of the birth of St John Bosco, the Conference theme was Meaning Through Story – A Salesian Perspective. Taking the lead from Don Bosco, himself a great story teller, the one who initiated the wonderful Salesian story, the creative interpreter of the Christian story, the imaginative reviser of the educational story, we reflected on the stories of the past that have shaped us, the stories of the present that we are creating in our Salesian settings, and the stories of the future that we dream about creating.

The different sessions and presentations were titled:

• The Emmaus Story
• The Power of Story
• The Stories of Don Bosco
• Contemporary Salesian Stories
• The Untold Salesian Story
• Bringing our Stories to Life

Through very interactive and exciting presentations and activities, including theatre, drama and story-telling, all participants were challenged to understand the power of story in our lives, to see how we all share a common Christian and Salesian story, to acknowledge that we are all contributors to the on-going story, and that the story is unfinished, it goes on into the future for others to share.

The Conference concluded with Eucharist celebrated by the Provincial, Fr Greg Chambers, who invited us all to be faithful, creative and courageous tellers of and contributors to our human, Christian, Salesian, and Province stories.

President of the Australia-Pacific Salesian Principals’ Association Mr Lyn Martin thanking Fr Greg for celebrating the concluding Eucharist.