Rocketing into CYPR 25/26 following this year’s Launch

Reflection written by Bernie Goddard, Engagement Officer for Million Minutes

This year we have been overwhelmed by the response and sign-ups for Celebrating Young People: Revival 25/26 so far. Since we launched this year's fully resourced program at our launch event back in June, everything has fallen into place, bringing a varied and exciting mix of almost 40 schools, parishes, and youth groups from 16 dioceses nationally.  

We are excited to be working with over 4000 young people and amplifying their voices not only in our work but with many other organisations who have contributed to this year's program. This is also an opportunity for young people to learn about how organisations such as Pax Christi, Young Christian Workers, CARJ (Catholic Association for Racial Justice), Caritas Salford, Common Good School, FCJ Centre for Spirituality and Eco Justice and many more live out Catholic Social Teaching in their work. 

The opportunity to work with so many young people this year means that we will be able to have a broad outlook on what young people around the UK are thinking and feeling about the communities where they live and go to school and the parish communities they are part of, as well as the wider world and Church. This information is important not only for Million Minutes and our work but also for the organisations we work with and for young people themselves. These voices inspire change; they are a call to action and give us the knowledge and understanding needed to stand in solidarity with young people nationally. Celebrating Young People: Revival is about creating a culture of listening, giving reason to why and how we can live out Catholic Social teaching, praying and discerning how we are called to respond, being inspired to act, acting through faith and through dialogue with others, and finally celebrating the amazing things young people offer our world and Church. 

We look forward sharing updates from our 25/26 cohort and invite you to join us in supporting and celebrating these inspiring young people.  

Celebrating Young People: Revival 2024

Celebrating Young People: Revival 2024 - Dialogue

This year we launched Celebrating Young People: Revival (CYPR), a project that seeks to put youth voice at the heart of change in communities. We worked with seven schools over the year, seeking to better understand young people's perspectives on issues that affect them within their communities. We have taken them on a learning journey to consider how young people can effect change through social action, prayer, and dialogue.

The 6 steps of CYPR have allowed an open platform for students to speak up and be heard. These steps have included asking questions directly, rather than presuming answers. The responses we received have been insightful, honest and challenging.

Importantly, at each stage, the young people's responses have been fed back to each school to give an understanding and perspective on the issues their students are concerned about. The young people have followed, not only by praying for some of theses issues, but also looking at what Catholic Social Teaching says on some of these topics. We also recorded a webinar with young leaders, to ask them about the importance of leadership, and how it feels for them to be inspiring others to be a change in the communities around them.

We celebrated the sixth step of our programme 'Dialogue', with an event at St Vincent's MissionHub in Sheffield. This was an opportunity to thank, encourage and celebrate the young people who were a part of this year's CYPR programme. We spent some time reflecting on the issues that had been raised over the previous steps, affecting both their local communities and the rest of the world. We delved deeper by looking at how young people can - and already are - making positive changes within schools, communities and the world. By calling the group to action in this way, it gave them the opportunity to look at and start planning what could be done to make change within the communities around them.

We hope to continue building relationships with Catholic schools, colleges and students over the next year, journeying with them and continuing to accompany them, guided by their voices on what young people want, need and feel is important to them.

We wish to thank our 7 schools that we have journeyed with this year, as well as Pax Christi and the Diocese of Hallam Youth Ministry for their collaboration and partnership.

We will be running our CYPR programme again over the next academic year. We are currently looking for schools and partners to work with us on this project. For more information contact bernie@millionminutes.org.