Chipping Norton young people work for a better world

We caught up with Denise Dane, youth co-ordinator at Holy Trinity parish, Chipping Norton, about what the young people in her parish have been doing in the 18 months since livesimply started.

LS: Hi Denise, can you first up tell us about your group and how they got involved in livesimply?
DD: Yeah, there are about 15 young people in the group, between 11 and 16 years old, and they meet fairly regularly through the year. They got involved in livesimply with National Youth Sunday 2006 and we used the CD-ROMs and posters to kick things off.

And what kinds of things have you got up to?
We have Youth Masses about once a term, and they're always on a livesimply theme, one of the three strands: simply, sustainably and in solidarity. They use drama and posters and made a promise board to lead the rest of the parish in making lifestyle changes.

We have a planning meeting and work out how to present our message, draft prayers, allocate parts in dramas, and choose hymns and bidding prayers. The concept's good to pass on and the prayers are really good. Young people get it much quicker than the parish more generally!

We also have regular social justice themes to our youth group nights, and have had local diocesan youth workers come in, like Sr Gillian Murphy at Birmingham Catholic Youth Service and Ali Ahmad at CAFOD Birmingham.  They have brought games with them like the Circuit Board game which raises awareness of 'technological sweatshops', trade unionism and child labouring. They raise important questions about being able to live on such low wages, power, and unfairness.

I often pull out some interesting statistics from the internet and use them as discussion starters. It only needs 4 or 5 to really introduce a topic and they've got a lot of knowledge anyway. We've been using the 9 themes of Populorum Progressio recently, too, which has been really useful in connecting it to church teaching.

How do you tie it back into faith?
It all comes down to Christian responsibility. Caring and sharing resources. Are they ours or do they belong to everyone? Are they only for those who can afford them?

Christianity stresses equality and respect and how we treat others - that's all very livesimply. So we need to be more aware personally and individually, make alternative choices, conscious of the need to lives sustainably, we need to recycle and buy less stuff (clothing mainly).

I try to make the young people grateful for what they've got and I think livesimply has really helped with that.

Thanks Denise
No problems!