During
the year of 1992, a bunch of youths from the parish agreed to form
a youth group. The main reasons at that time were:
-
They all thought it was cool and fun to have a youth choir that
plays upbeat music and makes the mass more lively and interesting
-
They were all interested in music and loved to sing (even though
some couldn’t really sing that well)
-
They all believed in the Mass and the presence of Jesus in the
Eucharist and how important it was to make Mass relevant to youths
in the parish so they even asked for youth friendly-homilies
-
They liked hanging out with each other, meeting new people and
making friends
-
They wanted some freedom in expressing their faith in their own
way within the parish as young people
In 1998, the group decided to write a mission statement and give
a group a name – YouthWorks! – and adopt the motto “For
Faith and For Friendship”
We
are ALL for Mass. We believe Mass is the focal point of our faith
and we want every young Catholic to have a great appreciation and
understanding of the Mass so that they can truly love and live out
their faith.
We are ALL for friendship and fun – we want to explore and
share our faith in a nurturing, enjoyable environment where everyone
can be comfortable around each other. We want the youths to feel
welcomed in their parish and be able to talk about their needs,
issues and ask questions about our Catholic faith.
We
meet in the Fr Byrne Centre every 2nd and 3rd Saturday of the month
at 2:30pm (except for months with 5 Sundays, in which case, we meet
& sing for 2nd and 5th Saturday masses of those months). Our
meetings are taken up mostly with practising songs for Mass, but
we have in the past incorporated bible studies, games or just took
time out to get to know each other better.
In
the future, we are aiming to offer more faith/spiritual related
activities during the meetings so that we can reach out to more
young people in our parish plus organise regular social outings
and organise a youth camp and an Open Day every other year.
We
also have 3 key fundraiser events every year to help us run camps,
Open Days and to attend youth events organised in the diocese and
World Youth Days. These are:
- Easter Raffle & guessing competition
- Mother’s Day Flower Sale
- Father’s Day Krispy Kreme Doughnut Run
For
updates, please subscribe to yOuthwOrks@groups.msn.com
or visit http://groups.msn.com/yOuthwOrks
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