Gathered together in community in the name of Jesus Christ, we are sent to proclaim, by our very lives and activities, the Good News of the Kingdom.
(Constitutions 30)

The Barat House community in Roehampton consists of a group of rscj sisters and university students who live in our community house in the grounds of Digby Stuart College. The community aims to provide a space where students and sisters can create community together. To this end we all make a commitment:

• to create an environment where each one can feel welcomed and at home
• to grow in responsibility and awareness of the needs of each person and of the group;
• to support each other through the challenges of work & study;
• to spend time in shared activities such as prayer, meals, celebrations of birthdays, etc;
• to welcome differences of culture and mentality and learn to grow in mutual trust.

Students lead very busy and often hectic lives and our community tries to offer a place for a small group to experience a deeper sense of purpose and value during their time at university with the opportunity to reflect on their choices and priorities and to develop skills of balancing the demands of work, friendships, etc.

We try to continue the work of St Madeleine Sophie in our desire that the students have the opportunities to develop their talents and also become increasingly conscious of the part they can play in transforming the world around them.

A student reflecting on her time in Barat said: In this community I have had the opportunity to get to know people whose backgrounds, personalities, races, ages and religions are completely different from mine. The most amazing thing is that we accept each other, and then I realized that we are not that different after all. I was surprised to find out how similar we really are. I have learnt to tolerate others and at the same time it is nice to be accepted by others.