Overview
Advocacy for youth means making a commitment to stand by, with, and for young people. Advocacy helps to generate respect for youth and their issues among parishioners, business owners, Church leaders, elected officials, policy-makers, and key community leaders.
Be a Champion of Youth: Standing With, By, and For Young People explores advocacy as an essential component of a comprehensive and life-changing Catholic youth ministry. This book can serve as a primer for individual coordinators of youth ministry to gauge their own advocacy efforts or it could form the basis for empowering an entire youth ministry team or parish.
Product Details
Copyright: Aug. 1, 2007
Format: Paperback
Size: 6 x 9
Length: 104 pages
Item number: 3827
ISBN: 978-0-88489-939-6
ISBN-10: 0-88489-939-X
Customer Reviews
By Mary Kelly Mueller, coordinator of youth ministry, Good Shepherd Parish, Shawnee, Kansas
Advocating with and for youth is an integral component of comprehensive youth ministry. Defining the term "advocacy" and acting on the concept is one of the greater challenges of working with young people. How do we integrate advocacy into ministry? What do we need to understand about structures and systems to empower teens to speak out? How do we focus our attentions on those issues that impact teens and communities?
Be a Champion of Youth: Standing With, By, and For Young People defines advocacy in concrete terms. In addition, advocacy is examined in light of the Scriptures and Catholic Tradition. Instruments for assessing and evaluating mindsets and efforts provide insights into current advocacy work. Inspiring examples of successful actions, ideas for helping youth find their own voices, a plan for building collaborative relationships with community organizations, and a vision for infusing advocacy into our parish and civic communities make this book a valuable resource for youth leaders, parish communities, and anyone who cares for and works with the young Church.
By Becki Kaman, coordinator of youth ministry, Saint Francis of Assisi, Fulton, Maryland
Be a Champion of Youth: Standing With, By, and For Young People is a must for anyone working with young people! It is an easy read that helps to sift through the many ways of ministering through advocacy. Getting young people involved in advocacy is made more accessible through the plain language and real-world examples used in this book. Worksheets and resources give youth workers practical tools to identify the need for advocacy and determine the best way to plan a successful campaign. Kudos to the McCartys for producing a valuable and much-needed resource!
By Barb Legere, coordinator of youth ministry, Saint John the Evangelist Parish, Spencerport, New York
Be a Champion of Youth: Standing With, By, and For Young People is a must-read resource for today's youth ministry leaders. Bob and Maggie McCarty truly understand the challenge of advocacy. Whether used with a youth ministry leadership team or as part of a parish-wide effort to expand youth ministry efforts, this book offers practical tools to advocate with and for young people. Your youth advocacy efforts will be enriched by this book whether you explore it a chapter at a time or work your way though it from start to finish.
