The J C Colin Project is a youth initiative of the New Zealand Province of the Society of Mary. This year we are very excited to have Lorraine Fairfield join our team. Lorraine has recently been DRS at St Patrick’s College Wellington, and among her many tasks she will be helping to produce classroom resources, and helping with organising and running retreats and forums.

Associated with us very closely is Br Ray Kelleher, who has been appointed as the co-ordinator for the National Network of Marist Schools. Welcome to Ray. Ray has just returned from the Cook Islands, and so we hope the present warm Wellington weather continues for him for some time!

The National Network of Marist Colleges is made up principally of the colleges the priests and brothers of the Society of Mary established or worked in.

Fr Kevin Murphy, Ms Lorraine Fairfield, Frs, Rowan Donoghue, Chris Martin, Pat Brophy, and Mark Walls

The J C Colin Project helps in Special Character development, year level retreats, staff professional development, and the like.

Another task is developing Youth initiatives with students of those colleges and others. We now run MaristYouthLeader as a team.
This year another trial programme will be run called YoungMaristNeighbours - a cross-cultural and outreach programme which will be run during the July and December school holidays. Two programmes will run this year, and we hope to extend this to many more next year.

We’re also planning a new programme for young adults called, yes you guessed it, MaristYoungAdult. We’re networking the colleges. We’ve seen how the Year 13 students from all around the country and Australia become firm friends at MaristYouthLeader. We also want to network young people, past pupils and others interested in the Marist Charism. So watch this space!