Students Choose Youth Refugees For National Campaign.

In January, I (Chris Fenner, year 12) and Ben Miles (yr10), both members of the Swan Parish Youth, accompanied by adult assistant Laura D’Rozario, joined ten other youth delegates and assistants to represent Perth at the Australian Young Christian Students National Conference. YCS is an international movement that is run by students to advocate social justice and help each other develop our faith. The eight-day meeting, held in Melrose, SA, brought together young people from Perth, Melbourne, Parramatta, Canberra, Townsville and Port Pirie to decide on the direction of the AYCS movement for the next two years. This involved sessions about the history and structure of the movement, group leadership and preparing and leading prayer. The conference also chose and devised the national campaign that all groups will strive to engage in over the next two years. The campaign theme is Youth Refugees and Asylum Seekers. Ben and I will be working with our local group this year to see how we can educate ourselves and our community about the rights of refugees, and our responsibilities to respond to this situation as Christ would want us too. Over the conference we made friends with other students from all over the country, shared our experiences and helped each other to develop in our awareness of God. We grew in confidence and felt it was a personally empowering experience. Our own youth group fundraised to assist with the costs of attending. The Swan Parish Youth have been meeting regularly for 5 years (currently numbering 12 members). The group provides a means to socialise in the parish and to coordinate events that bring members of the parish together, often in the form of fundraising for organisations such as TEAR and Anglicare.

Chris Fenner.

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