A letter from the Chair

My name is Jonathan Morris.  I am the Chair of the Diocesan Youth Council (DYC).  I would like to start by saying hello to anyone who is reading this and hope to see you at a meeting in the near future. 

A  Brief  Background

The youth council is open to any young person between the ages of 14 to 25. We have the much welcomed support of Steve Martin, the Diocesan Youth Officer, who, through his contacts, enables us to go away on some superb residentials throughout the year, gives us updates on various events that are on the horizon and, among other things, helps us to build our faith in a relaxed setting which brings together a very diverse group of young people.

We put on a diocesan youth event each year called ‘Walk the Walk’ - last year it was held at the diocesan offices in Worcester.  We had international artist Ben Okafor, who is absolutely fantastic, and the DYC, as well as a rather noisy drumming workshop from the guys from Drumlove.  Bishop David then got a grilling on various issues alongside some of our members.  We then finished with worship.  If you do nothing else this year just get down to ‘Walk the Walk’!

We get asked to do things all the time, whether it is just to help out round the workshops of a diocesan fun day like ‘Holy Smoke’ or ‘Saints in the Summer’, to being stewards at a festival called ‘Fireproof’.  We have run workshops at the diocesan pilgrimage and we will consider anything that you would like to ask of us.

We like to support each other - whenever members of the council bring to our attention any events in which they are involved, we try to get a group to attend.  Socials are other main events which we enjoy and this can be anything from a meal, to a weekend away, and everything in between, such as bowling, the cinema, etc.

Our main aim however is to be political.  We now have members in the new Church of England Youth Council.  We have 2 representatives who feed information and views into this Council and they have a direct feed into general synod.  We have 3 or 4 members (including myself) on Diocesan Synod.  I would not have been at this point had it not been for the youth council.  We have also encouraged others to force their way into their Parochial Church Councils and are hopefully looking at stepping up into deanery synods.  We like to be known as a friendly irritant in the diocese and to try and push youth issues as and when we can to try and ensure a future for the church of tomorrow.  Our minutes from meetings are sent into the Board of Education and we have a seat on the Children and Youth Committee.

What’s to come?

I hope that this year is going to be a big year for the youth council; we have a fair few things in the pipeline that I will let you know about in the coming weeks and months.  We have a brilliant group of highly talented, motivated people who believe that anything is possible and I am sure that, with this in mind, we will excel ourselves at every opportunity.  This year however, more than anything, we want to focus on increasing the size of the council and we want as many people to be a part of building our future church as we can get.  If you are willing, or know of anybody who might be willing, to give it a go please contact any of the following people:- 

Jonathan Morris (Chair)

Tel: 07763 555612 (after 5.00 pm)

e-mail: mental_morris@yahoo.com

Trevor Wooldridge (Youth Council Ambassador)

Tel: 01562 885280.

Sarah Brush (DYO)

Tel: 01905 732825

e-mail:

I hope that we will hear from you soon and that we will continue our work within the diocese.  If you are in any way able to support us we would be most grateful.

Kind regards and God bless

Jon

Visit the Worcester Diocesan Youth Council web site!

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On Saturday 21 April, Richard Nathaniel (St John’s, Brockmoor) and Sarah Chandler (Holy Trinity, Wordsley) attended the Church of England Youth Council meeting:

Hello everyone,

In the morning we discussed Diocesean Youth Councils: how to set up a Youth Council; the role of a Youth Council for both young people and older people. A problem many people found was trying to get people involved; in connection with this Rich spoke about our hopes that the planned ‘Meet and greet’ will involve more young people in WDYC and decision making. We also discussed the different set ups of Youth Councils: in some cases representatives are chosen from each deanery level, whilst in others, such as WDYC, anyone can join. Overall we thought that WDYC had a good set up, compared to many areas that did not have a Youth Council at all. All we feel now is that we need to keep WDYC going and to develop it in accordance with future needs.

After lunch we went into focus groups to discuss slavery within different contexts : world, community and church. We both decided upon community as we are both interested in local society. The group tried to describe slavery and discussed what it meant to us. We were against the low paid jobs many people are forced into and trafficking of women for the sex trade. Our group decided to look at leaflets so we would become better educated on these issues. Fair trade was also discussed widely: we believed that we should support it, and came up with the aims of eventually making our churches, schools and diocese fair-trade. Also we should think where all our goods, including clothes, came from and we should research ethical goods. These are our aims for our next meeting in November.

If you have any questions please get in contact with us through the WDYC website: http://www.worcesterdyc.com

God Bless

Richard and Sarah