Immersion Retreats

Immersion Retreats

The Immersion Retreat serves as an experiential learning space to build community, work with local partner agencies, dig into reflection on injustices and their root causes, and create action plans to address those injustice. Community comes through shared time cooking and cleaning meals, storytelling, and practicing values of hospitality, inclusion, and stewardship as a group. Through partnerships with local agencies, retreat participants are able to get to know people in Chicago directly impacted by injustices, challenge societal stereotypes, and break down barriers that continue to perpetuate inequity and indifference. We focus on the intertwined nature of injustices in our programming by highlighting the systems of homelessness, food insecurity, incarceration, education, and immigration. Through various activities and group dialog, we reflect on the underlying causes of what we see at partner agencies, and we discern our own responsibility and action plans going forward.

Retreats for high school and college students range from a weekend to a week-long experience and include visits to partner agencies, reflection activities, communal meals, and recreational time. The Darst Center hosts groups of at least five participants and up to 35 participants. Groups reside at the Darst Center in shared rooms, and we travel through the city via vans or buses provided by the group or via public transportation.

Please contact Danny Warwick, our Program Director, to schedule your retreat.

A Unique Educational Experience

We are here to create a unique experience for your group and your students. With some flexibility and creativity, we work to ensure the retreat programming will impact the students and support their growth in nurturing a personal passion for social change. Our retreats focus on five 'burning issues' of injustice: homelessness, food insecurity, education, immigration, incarceration. We can adjust programming to cover all five injustices or hone in on a couple. We structure retreats in three main ways: 1) visits to our partner agencies, including both direct service options and experiential learning opportunities; 2) educational sessions and reflections designed to go deeper and extend the work and observations from partner agencies; 3) communal practices of shared meals, recreational time, and upkeep of our shared space.

We work with both religious and secular schools and groups to shape immersion experiences that speak to the specific context and needs of the participants. Depending on the group's background, age range, and religious context, we offer a number of components for Immersion Retreats: videos and articles on our five burning issues, daily communal prayers, reflection activities and small group sharing, and opportunities to attend local events in Chicago related to current justice campaigns and efforts.

As we wrap up a retreat with a group, we work to craft an action plan or accountability plan for participants to continue bringing what they have learned into their lives at home, school, faith community, and beyond. For schools within a shorter driving distance of Chicago, we are able to offer post-retreat workshops on campus for students to enrich their leadership skills to create social change at home.

The Darst Center staff have completed in the Virtus program through the Archdiocese of Chicago, including Mandated Reporter Training, Protecting God's Children, and Sexual Harassment Training.

Sample Schedules

The Darst Center uniquely makes each schedule for immersion retreats. We can customize a retreat from an overnight to a week-long retreat to fit the needs of a group.

The following sample schedules will give you a sense of what various retreats can look like.