To this end, four PCS students have completed Concordia’s summer immersive EnvisionPDX program, which collaborates with high school students to explore innovative and creative new models of leadership at the intersections of Christian faith and positive social change.  The program helps students connect their faith to action and challenges them to dig deep and channel their passions for helping others, to explore their self-image, and to discover how to become agents of change.  (https://envisionpdx.cu-portland.edu/)

Acceptance into the program is competitive and completing the program is challenging.  We're proud that senior Jonathan Croston; juniors, Justin Keegan and Genesis Berlin; and sophomore, Annie Bahr, were selected to be part of the EnvisionPDX 2017 cohort of 33 students, and that all four graduated from the program this past summer. 

Jonathan shares that his motivation to participate in EnvisionPDX stemmed from the “opportunity to work together with other people my age and to try to identify problems in our communities so collectively we could attempt to solve them.”  We at PCS look forward to this young man’s calling after he graduates this year in 2018!

Along with the opportunity to work with teenagers in their age group, Annie Bahr expresses how she and other students from other walks of life were able “to respectfully sit down and have thoughtful conversations about faith . . . [this] helped me see that my student life can be used to express my faith and start conversations that are meaningful . . . .”

The students were divided into various groups, each exploring the interface between faith and social justice, and using the two to solve common problems.  It was a good experience for Genesis Berlin who tells how her group “worked on a program that specifically helped patients with schizophrenia get help from others.”

Justin Keegan relates that “EnvisionPDX allowed me to step up as a leader in various ways, so now at school, I get to be the leader God would want me to be.”

Read more about two of our PCS students who are featured in The EnvisionPDX Experience.