Our final Friday blog on Lenten works of mercy is from schools volunteer Penny Morse.
Guti (far left) and her friends collecting safe clean water from a local pump in Uganda.
During Lent I have been visiting primary schools in the Clifton diocese, meeting children and sharing stories from Uganda in assemblies and workshops. In this Extraordinary Jubilee of Mercy, Pope Francis e invites us to be living signs of Jesus’ love. This Lent I’ve really seen these living signs of love and mercy lived out through children’s actions.
To celebrate International Day of Literacy, children’s author and primary school teacher Russ Brown explains how CAFOD’s big book for children can excite the imagination and help children’s understanding of the wider world.
“A big book to promote big talk” Russ Brown
Today is International Day of Literacy, a day to celebrate the importance of literacy around the world.
CAFOD’s big book, A day with Musa, takes us on a journey through an ordinary day for an ordinary child in Bangladesh. It raises the simple question of how are we different, while cleverly showing children how fundamentally we are all the same, regardless of skin, language or belief.
On 6 February, the CAFOD youth team will be attending the CYMfed Youth Leaders’ Congress in London. This is a day of nourishment, networking and renewal for those who are involved in working with young people in the Church. Julia Corcoran, a former CAFOD gap year volunteer and currently an intern with Columbans’ Justice and Peace team, reflects on the value of the congress.
My name is Julia Corcoran and two years ago I took part in the CAFOD Step into the Gap programme. I loved my time on the programme and was fortunate to see the work of CAFOD in Sierra Leone. After the programme I went on to complete my masters in ‘Rights, Gender and International Law.’ I am now doing a 12 month internship with the Columbans’ Justice and Peace team and CYMFed’s Administration. My time on Step into the Gap definitely prepared me for what I am doing now. I often go into schools and talk to young people about a variety of Justice and Peace issues.
Leah Fox is a volunteer at Youth Ministry Team in the Diocese of Hexham and Newcastle. Here she reflects on her first experience of campaigning with CAFOD. In March Leah will be continuing her journey with CAFOD’s campaigning in a visit to Parliament with other youth leaders from across the country.
At the end of November I was asked to go and join CAFOD at the People’s Climate March in London. This was a peaceful demonstration to voice the opinion to world leaders that they need to act against climate change, just before they met in Paris to make some very important decisions. Climate change affects so many people across the world, but especially those living in poverty, so I was very excited to be joining others to help encourage world leaders to recognise and act on this issue.
Leah (left) campaigning with other youth leaders at the climate march.
When I was asked to go, I wasn’t really sure what to expect. I had never been on any sort of march so I naively thought that there might be a few hundred people marching through London, interrupting people’s busy lives. So I was very surprised to join over 50,000 people walking from Hyde Park to Whitehall!
When we first arrived at the meeting point for the entire march we made our way to the section which had people from different faith groups marching together, towards the front. CAFOD was one of many faith-based charities that were marching. There were more people there already than I could ever have imagined. Soon we all had a CAFOD placard and a few others and myself drew green hearts on our faces to represent CAFOD. The energy from the march was amazing, with cheering, music and people talking over speakers. Politicians from every major political party spoke before the march to show what their party would do to prevent climate change.
The climate march took place ahead of the Paris COP where world leaders met to discuss climate change
Throughout the march we saw people from different charities marching on behalf of different reasons (some were even dressed as polar bears or bumble bees!) but despite the many reasons for people being there, it felt amazing to be united with so many people, marching for one outcome – to stop climate change. I got to talk to many people from CAFOD and other charities over the course of the march and talk about my faith and the amazing things we can do to help raise awareness of climate change and how it’s affecting communities across the world.
At the end of the day, we were all very tired from walking, but left the walk feeling very happy and fulfilled knowing that we had helped raise awareness to people that climate change is a problem and needs to be stopped.
Throughout this year we have been blogging for CAFOD about climate change. When I first started I thought it would be mostly just about global warming and saving energy, but I have learnt it is so much more than that. I have never really stopped to think about how the actions of people in this country affected the lives of those in poorer countries.
All Saints bloggers find out more about climate change
As well as saving energy, we need to think about how much of the earth’s resources we use and how wasteful we are.
Everyone talks about how we, as a country, need to save money and learn to live on less but I never really stopped to think about the big difference each family can make. Last week I watched Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s programme on food waste.
Bernadette Goddard took part in the Step into the Gap programme last year. In this blog she describes why the work of partners in Nicaragua inspired her to ask for World Gifts as Christmas presents this year.
As Christmas approaches every year I am asked the question what would I like. It’s a double question for me as my birthday is just five days before Christmas, on 20 December. Each year I receive many gifts, often ones which, if I’m honest, I don’t need or use. In previous years I’ve asked for things which would be useful. Last year I was about to embark on a life changing trip with CAFOD to Nicaragua and people helped with my kit list, buying me useful items to take with me such as torches and plug adapters! This Christmas I have decided to appeal to family and friends on social media to buy World Gifts.
deliver assemblies to raise environmental awareness in their school community, and blog about what they are doing. Quickly realizing that this was an issue bigger than just the school community, the group invited Andrew Stephenson MP to a Q&A session during which he was asked to outline the government’s plans for minimising damage to our planet. He went away and brought the questions to Prime Minister’s questions. The group was recently honoured as part of Million Minutes’ Celebrating Young People Awards, which celebrated how young people live out Catholic Social Teaching every day through taking social action. They were co-winners of the Caring for the Environment award. Here’s what Hannah and Hollis had to say:
On 1st July, we embarked on our long awaited journey to London. We were ready to take our first steps into the House of Lords, to celebrate our work on climate change as nominees for the Barbara Ward Award for Caring for the Environment.
As only two people were permitted to attend parliament. Hannah and I (Hollis) had to occupy ourselves in London for 5 hours, which certainly isn’t a bad deal! We both agreed we wanted to see Covent Garden, as we’ve heard it’s one of the key places to visit in the capital city. Whilst in Covent Garden, which was amazing, we enjoyed the entertainment and some very much needed ice-cream before freshening up to go and meet Maisie and Theo, for the award ceremony at the Prince Charles Theatre, in Leicester Square.
This week is National Volunteer Week, and we’re celebrating the amazing and varied work of our CAFOD volunteers. Schools volunteer Toni Woodhead shares her experience of visiting schools, getting creative and inspiring children to take action for CAFOD.
Toni (right) speaking to new school volunteers during their training.
Being a school volunteer has been rewarding and enlightening, even with the preparation time and the first scary moments in front of the children. I have even found a creative side to myself and it is amazing how much it is developing!
The resources from CAFOD are always great and usually contains all the information about what is needed. At first this was all I used but as confidence grows, so do the ideas. From the first dirty water container and the wonderfully wrapped clean water, to the straw animal from Ikea that looked like a supergoat once a red cloak was added, I have started to look at every shape and size in a different way. I used glass spheres in a bucket for the weight instead of water. I bought child size garden tools for the “place at the table” and large sand toys for the “dig deep”. For the funny shaped food I got pictures from the internet and made them A4 size so the children could see them. They found them enjoyable. I found an old box in the loft that I cleaned and stuck on the words “treasure”.
Young leaders from Portsmouth Diocese take part in our One Climate, One World campaign.
Halfway through the year, Julia from CAFOD’s Youth Team looks back at the achievements of our Young Leaders so far.
CAFOD’s Young Leaders are sixth-form students from across the country who inspire other young people to support CAFOD and take action, from fundraising to raising awareness of the issues CAFOD campaigns on.
120 amazing sixth-form students from the Dioceses of Brentwood, Clifton, Hallam, Portsmouth, Southwark and Westminster are training as CAFOD young leaders. Alongside their A-Levels, they have committed to CAFOD training days and taking action on injustice in the UK and overseas. Continue reading “CAFOD Young Leaders’ mid-year report”
Young climate bloggers from St James’ Catholic High School tell the story of their CAFOD training weekend ‒ the fun, the challenges and the inspiration.
“Don’t use your hairdryers …” was one of the first pieces of advice we were given on arrival at the Othona Community in Bradwell on Sea “Hairdryers use more electricity than all the ovens, lights, fridges and freezers in our community joined together. If you use a hairdryer it could overload the system.” As the Orthona Community was off the main grid, frizzy hair it was to be. This was the first of many lessons learnt whilst experiencing sustainable living. The hard work and fun was about to begin.
