Our Mission

AFAS aims to provide an opportunity for friendship and solidarity between the students and staff of Augustinian schools and colleges in the Philippines and in Australia.Villanova College students and staff come to learn and to appreciate the Filipino culture and gain insight into what it means to live in a developing country.There is a strong sense of solidarity as AFAS strives to work with Augustinian communities to support struggling, talented students to gain an education.The aims of AFAS are realised in the biannual friendship exchanges of Villanova College staff and students to the Philippines.

In 1993, the first friendship exchange was inaugurated with students and teachers from Villanova College, Brisbane travelling to Augustinian communities in Cebu, Bacolod and Iloilo.  This first exchange established the bonds of friendship and solidarity that have formed the basis of the nine subsequent exchanges to Filipino Augustinian communities.  The exchanges have included staff and students, except in the years 2001 and 2003, when only teachers travelled to the Philippines. Political unrest at the time deemed it unwise take students. 

At the end of the 1993 exchange a student commented that ‘ he was amazed by the similarity between the Augustinian communities in the Philippines and in Australia.’ Teachers noted that the Villanova College boys had become aware of the responsibility of first world students for their counterparts in the developing world’

In 1995, three Filipino lay Augustinians visited Villanova College and in 1998 AFAS supported Filipino students who attended the Augustinian Youth Festival in Sydney.  In 1998 Villanova College hosted a group of students from Regina Carmeli, Augustinian College, who performed an historical play for the Villanova College community. In 2008, AFAS was able to sponsor a Filipino teacher from Murcia in the Negros Occidental, to attend World Youth Day in Sydney.