CAFOD Young Leaders

Jo Lewry, CAFOD Portsmouth’s Community Participation Co-ordinator, introduces our new CAFOD Young Leaders who are year 12 students from Farnborough Hill, St Anne’s Southampton, St Joseph’s Reading, and Salesian College Farnborough…

It was great to meet our new CAFOD Young Leaders at the first training day on Monday 31st January although it was online it was an inspiring and engaging session. Thank you so much to all the Young Leaders for committing to support CAFOD in their schools this year. The day started with a welcome introduction from Kirstie our Young Leader Coordinator and each school were asked to make a fun name mixing up their surnames. This was followed by a reflection video ‘Love Never Fails’ and a Quiz about their understanding of CAFOD’s structure and work. A discussion followed about what the students thought ‘a fair and just world’ should look like and what changes they would make if they were a world leader.
 
Next an inspiring video was shown of Bea a CAFOD ex young leader who became a CAFOD Step into the Gap volunteer; whereby she gave a year to CAFOD and as part of that year she was sent to Peru and witnessed first-hand the impact of climate change – of a melting glacier. She realised how actions we take in the UK about not taking care of the environment, impacts other parts of the world causing climate change. Bea spoke movingly about how the visit to Peru had changed her thinking and she went on to campaign against the impacts of climate change. In the last part of the day the Young Leaders were shown a Lent video of CAFOD’s work in Sierra Leone and were told about how a four-year girl’s life had been transformed by being  given nutritious food through the work of CAFOD’s partners in the local community. Finally, the Young Leaders were challenged to plan an awareness raising or fundraising project within their schools to focus on Lent theme of hunger. One idea was to encourage the school community to sign up to ‘Walk Against Hunger’ and to organise a sponsored walk in their school. We look forward to hearing how their projects progress.