​In every parish there is great concern for the young people, and lots of desire to help them, but not much in the way of ideas that seem to work.
 
Our parish doesn't even have a youth group at present, although there is talk of starting it up again in July – presumably after World Youth Day Krakow and mid-year university exams.
 
A wiser move might be to start sooner and have something with a bit of momentum for youngsters to join when they return. Joining a winning team is a lot more attractive than the heavy work of building a team that might be a winner months and years down the track.
 
The previous youth group met fortnightly, following the 6pm Sunday night Mass, and was largely invisible to the parish present at the other weekend Masses unless there was a fund raising event going on for World Youth Day pilgrims.
 
To find out about the youth group you had to ring a mobile phone number. For me that's a bit of a barrier because I'd like to see salient details in the parish bulletin, on a parish notice board and on the parish website before I picked up the phone, but perhaps the ease with which text messages are sent these days works in favour of this method with young people.
 
Having fortnightly meetings raises red flags for me too. I know just how cross I would be if I went to the effort of showing up and found nothing was on because I chose the wrong week. Fortnightly meetings also cause me to question the commitment of the leaders. While the average youngster will show up without any regularity, there needs to always be someone there to catch them if they do show up. Weekly is best, but if that's not practical then monthly is easier to remember.
 
At our other weekend Masses we have welcomers who hand out parish bulletins and greet people as they come in. Strangely that doesn't seem to happen at our 6pm Sunday Mass which gets the youngest demographic of all 4 weekend Masses. Sometimes there aren't any parish bulletins left, I get that, but what a golden opportunity is being missed for the young people to act as welcomers and to be able to gradually get to know the others who come to that Mass by name and to be able to say, 'We've got …. on at the youth group tonight after Mass, would you like to join us?'
 
My memories of youth groups past (in decades of yore) were ambivalent at best. I normally came home more frustrated with the lack of organization and planning than uplifted and spiritually nourished. Rumours exist that from the bishop down, there is a desire that youth groups have more real religious content than social activity. What should this content be? If I were a youngster again, what would have the pulling power to get me out of my comfort zone and off to a youth group (other than the hope of meeting someone attractive of the opposite gender)?
 
Two ideas might be worth exploring. One's a moldy oldie and the other is new.
 
Back in the 1930s parishes had debating societies. Whether something as formal as that is needed, I don't know. But picking a topic the previous week and getting everyone to prepare 'for' and 'against' arguments, would get youngsters thinking through both sides of an issue. On the day, each person present would pick 'for' or 'against' out of a hat, and then deliver 2 minutes of speech for that side of the case. Relevant topics could be 'Are Internships good for you?', 'Does my vote matter?', 'Is suffering worthwhile?', 'Dating vs Courtship', 'What is better: being spiritual or being religious?'.
 
An important component of being a young person is making big decisions like what to study, where to study, and what kind of work am I suited to? Current data says that the average young person is taking 8 years to get full time work, even if they have qualifications. That's a lot of worry and uncertainty for anyone to deal with. I suspect that if we don't tackle the jobs/unemployment situation with our young people then we are failing them. Even if someone is already in tertiary education, eg law, they still need to work out what kind of law practice they are best suited to, for example size of firm, content of practice (criminal, environmental, family, business). That's why I am thinking working week by week through the exercises in the Teen edition of the job seeking book 'What Colour is my Parachute? might be an answer. Every exercise increases self- knowledge, and helps to discover God given talents and personal preferences, increasing the chances of discovering God's perfect will for each participant. With prayers to begin and end, and time to share the ups and downs of the journey, it might be a winner. Wouldn't it be wonderful to see the personal discoveries and friendships formed bear fruit in successful new business enterprises that bring honour to God and livelihoods and hope to others?
 
But how do you actually get them in? Putting up a poster or adding a paragraph to the parish bulletin is not going to work. Think about what it takes for you to go to a meeting where you are sure you will know nobody? It is even tougher when you are a young person. Remember, the majority of the young people in our parishes don't even know each other. That means you need to have ice-breaker events and plenty of personal 'face to face' invitations.
 
What kind of ice-breaker event would get you to attend?
 
My ideal ice-breaker event would be on a Saturday night, straight after vigil Mass, in the parish hall. A little bit of fundraising could be done with a sausage sizzle, drinks and a raffle. Entry cost would be a nominal amount like $5 unless you were bringing someone aged 13-30 with you, in which case you would both get in free. Call it a 'Music and Dance' night, and have a selection of music from the 40s, 50s, 60s and 70s, with lots music that waltzes and foxtrots could be danced to. For a playlist would need to include a bit of Glen Miller, Elvis, Beatles, Moon River, Unchained Melody, Puttin' on the Ritz, and other much loved 'dance-able' hits. The idea is that people could come to dance if they wished, or just sit and tap and sway to the music if they wished. Hopefully the youngsters would see some of their oldsters shine on the dance floor, and have a bit of fun in the process. At half time there would be an announcement about the plans to re-launch the youth group. The aim is to tell people about the small ice-breaker events that have been planned for the youngsters. Those in the youth group leadership team would then work the room for the rest of the evening, getting to know people and talking in more detail about their vision for the youth group. Definitely no alcohol would be permitted, because it just causes trouble. You would need a First Aid person on hand just in case someone hurt themselves in a fall.
 
In the meantime let us pray for our young people and for those called to minister to them.
 
St John Bosco, pray for us.
St Mary Mazzarello, pray for us.
Our Lady, Help of Christians, pray for us

Thoughts and ideas have been coming to me, and at the present time I do not see the way clear to bring them into being. Maybe you can, if I tell you about them.

The third one, for want of a better name, I have dubbed 'Prayer, Polish and Pepperoni'. I've had these thoughts and ideas since just after WYD Rio de Janiero.

This is the situation:

World Youth Day will be held in Krakow, Poland, in 2016. By rights preparations in parishes should be well underway. I hope that in your parish they are. It is not so in our parish, as far as I can tell, and one of the contributing factors is that our diocese was without a bishop for a whole year and the new bishop has only been installed for a month.

Our Youth Group seems to meet after the 6pm Sunday Mass, and possibly on a fortnightly basis. What they do and how they do it, I don’t know. But I do know that very little information from them trickles into the parish bulletin except for when World Youth Day gets close and some fund raising happens.

For WYD Sydney in 2008 we had some Croatian pilgrims stay with us for the Days in the Diocese part of WYD. Thankfully one of them had good English. Of the other two, one had mediocre English and the other had none. Before the pilgrims arrived we tried to find out where they came from, so that we could have a go at learning their language, but that side of organisational matters was very fluid and there was no certainty until we actually met them. It is a very frustrating part of WYD for both pilgrims and the families they stay with. So even though a lot of youngsters seem to get by these days with devices linked to Google Translate, I am sure that makes for very stilted conversations between pilgrims and host families.

The more our pilgrims can learn the language of the WYD host country the better. For Poland it is even more important because their alphabet has 32 letters, 23 consonants and 9 vowels compared to English with 26 letters.

Because there was a lot of post WW2 immigration from war torn countries like Poland, our parishes have a number of 1st generation and 2nd generation Polish immigrants in them. Some parishes are lucky enough to have Polish priests from missionary religious Orders. Who better than these immigrants to teach our prospective WYD Krakow pilgrims about the language, culture and etiquette of Poland? Who better to inspire our youngsters than these precious immigrants who know what religious persecution is all about and whose faith has been tested and proved like gold?

Sunday night strikes me as a less than ideal night for a youth group, since most youngsters would have school assignments or tertiary projects due on Monday. A Tuesday or Wednesday evening would be better, from 6pm-7.30pm on a fortnightly basis.

The preparation evenings would have pre-ordered pepperoni pizza on the menu.

They would start at 6pm with Grace before meals, an Our Father, a Hail Mary and a Glory Be all prayed in Polish.

Then there would be some getting to know you time as everybody tucked in to dinner.

Following dinner at c.6.25pm there would be half an hour of Polish language study and conversation practice which would include at least 5 minutes worth of learning the parts of the Mass in Polish.

Then 10 minutes of stories about the culture and religious practices of Poland.

Then 10 minutes about the latest WYD news and pilgrimage preparation information.

Then 5 minutes of silent prayer as a group, praying interiorly from the heart for all the international WYD needs.

To end, for the last 10 minutes everyone would break up into small groups so that the Polish speakers could pray for the needs of the WYD pilgrims and so that the WYD pilgrims could pray for the needs of the Polish speakers.

That's the idea. It would even work, if cut proportionately down to an hour, on tertiary campuses for one lunch hour a fortnight.