tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-974612240166391268.post5633721117570428587..comments2023-05-21T12:12:39.327-04:00Comments on YRUU Institutional Memory Project: Tim Fitzgerald and Heather Vail - Fall 2004YRUU Steering Committee, 2007-2008http://www.blogger.com/profile/12552508954782727408noreply@blogger.comBlogger7125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-974612240166391268.post-73628599375632208162008-02-13T20:01:00.000-05:002008-02-13T20:01:00.000-05:00Jumping off from Heather's comment "Let me repeat ...Jumping off from Heather's comment "<I>Let me repeat that again. Local congregations DO NOT currently serve many UU youth because they do not actively practice youth empowerment. Most churches do not actively encourage youth to be on committees, few if any churches welcome youth on their Boards, often youth are not allowed to vote or be full members of the congregation.</I>"<BR/><BR/>I'd put a slightly different spin on this statement. Here and there, some of our congregations have been very successful in serving some of the needs of youth. But I cannot think of anyone whose local UU church experience as a youth has been one of systematic empowerment with congregational support for pursuing goals chosen by youth.<BR/><BR/>In some local churches I have seen empowerment by abdication, which can work as long as you happen to have a group of youth whose sense of mutual respect is high enough. And I've seen various programs that succeed in education, community building, or simple fun. But when it comes to systematically equitable distribution of power I have seen only fleeting, occasional successes. This tells me that, as a denomination, <I>we do not have a good recipe for empowering local programs.</I> Maybe it's possible, but we don't know how to do it yet.<BR/><BR/>This brings me to the central thread of this comment: <B>For some youth, adolescence is all about power.</B> This goes at least double for UU youth, who are raised to question authority, to challenge the status quo.<BR/><BR/>As UUs, we disproportionately encourage the 5-year-old to ask why things are as they are. We disproportionately encourage the 8-year-old to challenge her evangelical school friends' beliefs. We disproportionately encourage the 11-year-old to stand up for his rights at school. But when a 14-year-old wants a voice in church policy or a 17-year-old calls out her elders on hypocritical church policy, most UUs are considerably more hostile.<BR/><BR/>Developmentally, early adolescence is the time when a child's parent-centered identity morphs into a youth's peer-centered identity. A preadolescent generally treats the family as "self" and other institutions as "other". But an adolescent treats the <I>peer group</I> as "safe" and the <I>family</I> as "other". When parents or trusted mentors are moved abruptly into the less trusted category, they are apt to respond with mistrust of their own. In my experience this transition is at the root of much of the distrust between youth and adults in local congregations.<BR/><BR/>Mind you, the experience isn't universal -- please don't quote me as having asserted that it is -- but enough youth grow up into this "trust gap" environment that their relationship with their parents or church elders necessarily involves a power struggle. The 14-year-old is crying at the top of her lungs "<I>I am me!</I>" -- and too many are told "no you're not."<BR/><BR/>When it works, YRUU is a place where that same 14-year-old cries "<I>I am me!</I>" and is met with a resounding "<I><B>HELL YES YOU ARE!!</B></I>" For a large subset of our youth, this can make the difference between misery and contentment, between disaffectation and belonging.<BR/><BR/>Hmm. I just reviewed the following and found that I'm making a conceptual leap between questions of <I>power</I> and questions of <I>identity</I>. That's a comfortable leap for me but if you have any doubts ask anyone whose spent a year or more pursuing anti-oppression work. For now I'll take that connection as a postulate.<BR/><BR/>Anyway, my point is that parents and church elders are (on average as a class) <I>uniquely unqualified</I> to provide that "hell yes you are" feedback to their own youth. Even if we had unlimited resources to support the growth of wicked-cool new programs in local churches, this dynamic would be a big barrier to overcome. By stepping outside the local "I've known you since you were this big" bubble, district and continental YRUU programs have a huge advantage in this area.Eric Swansonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11479926833425686231noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-974612240166391268.post-52079488583075052032008-02-13T17:30:00.000-05:002008-02-13T17:30:00.000-05:00I read that as implying "Any concerns those adults...<I>I read that as implying "Any concerns those adults might have are automatically invalid, and they should submit to their proper place as receivers of top-down communication."</I><BR/><BR/>It's in reference to communication from youth leadership structures to youth groups. Like, information about cons.<BR/><BR/>It is one thing for adults to have concerns and to bring them to their youth and to the youth leadership structures. In my experience, those were never unwelcome. It is another thing entirely to respond to those concerns by hiding information about youth activities from the youth they were supposed to be serving without any process for including those youth in the dialogue. To me, that is highly inappropriate. It's also highly endemic to local congregational RE programming, and it's a small piece of the local problems serving youth that the UUA never showed any interest in helping address. This conversation has never before happened on any kind of scale, and that to me is a failure of those who consider themselves adult allies to UU youth.Pogo Parkhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14982788424105560925noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-974612240166391268.post-65041204951710934822008-02-13T17:29:00.000-05:002008-02-13T17:29:00.000-05:00This comment has been removed by the author.Pogo Parkhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14982788424105560925noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-974612240166391268.post-48529973256981618742008-02-13T17:25:00.000-05:002008-02-13T17:25:00.000-05:00This comment has been removed by the author.Pogo Parkhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14982788424105560925noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-974612240166391268.post-63292761150395810162008-02-13T17:01:00.000-05:002008-02-13T17:01:00.000-05:00Oh, and this:"Any concerns those adults might have...Oh, and this:<BR/>"Any concerns those adults might have are automatically invalid, and they should submit to their proper place as receivers of top-down communication."<BR/><BR/>Youth empowerment is not about silencing adults. It's not. That attitude represents a serious gap in communication between youth and adult communities. Youth empowerment necessitates adults taking an active supporting/mentoring role for youth. That's important, and I think it's absence in the last few years is a big reason why problems with districts have been getting worse.<BR/><BR/>In an ideal youth empowerment relationship, adults should be able to make those concerns and everyone involved should dialogue about them. The problem is, adults frequently side-step the process of dialogue and instead block youth events and take away resources. <BR/><BR/>If you were at a local congregation and you had problems with sending youth to district events, did it ever occur to you to speak with the district outreach person, and your youth group, about these concerns? Or did you instead decide that even starting the conversation was too dangerous, and resort to something like actively discouraging youth from attending regional events. Please correct me if my assumption that it's more like the later is off-base. <BR/><BR/>That being said "their proper role as intermediaries" is a sentence I wish we could take back, or at least elaborate on a bit. It is a little touchy. We did write the piece 3 and a half years ago, though, and we were pretty angry at the time.Heatherhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18299310334882299917noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-974612240166391268.post-5039703382181750442008-02-13T16:56:00.000-05:002008-02-13T16:56:00.000-05:00District and continental YRUU existed as resources...District and continental YRUU existed as resources for youth who were not being served by congregations. Youth empowerment - as it was practiced in YRUU when YRUU was functioning in healthy and safe ways (probably around 3 or 4 years ago, now) - simply does not exist in most local congregations.<BR/><BR/>Which is not to say that I don't believe that it can. I happen to be incredibly fortunate enough to be part of a strong youth program in my current church, consisting of a functioning youth group with its own leadership, a functioning youth/adult committee which advocated on behalf of youth concerns (changed the bylaws, for example, and recruited and interviewed youth advisors), and youth on many committees, including the parish council.<BR/><BR/>My experience is depressingly unique. Many congregations are simply too small to offer youth programs - many don't even have the resources to offer OWL or COA courses. Other congregations simply have youth groups, which range in levels of youth empowerment depending - largely - on the institutional support from staff and volunteers of the church, and thee attitude of adults serving as advisors. Youth groups are fine, but they are not generally models of youth empowerment UNLESS the youth involved in them (or those who had helped to design them) have experienced youth empowerment - often through regional or continental events. <BR/><BR/>Let me repeat that again. Local congregations DO NOT currently serve many UU youth because they do not actively practice youth empowerment. Most churches do not actively encourage youth to be on committees, few if any churches welcome youth on their Boards, often youth are not allowed to vote or be full members of the congregation. <BR/><BR/>But what differentiated district and continental organizing is that the radical idea of <I>youth empowerment</I> was practiced. Youth were not only taken seriously, they were taught that they can and should take the responsibility for their own organizations. This trickled down to many local congregations - like mine - through things like Leadership Development Conferences, Spirituality Development Conferences, and Anti-Racism conferences. All things once offered by YRUU. In fact, even the effect of local youth group members attending district events had the impact of strengthening local youth organizations and building leadership. Hand in hand with my local congregations stellar youth program was a dedication by the DRE, by the minister, and by the congregatoin to youth empowerment. And hand in hand with that stellar local program was a delegation of youth regularly attending district events.<BR/><BR/>District events weren't for everyone, but they were what some needed. They were a resource for the leadership. They were energizing. They were inspiring. They actively practiced youth empowerment. <BR/><BR/>When DREs and ministers make decisions on a local level to prohibit their youth from attending district events - which they so often did - all of the power was in their hands. That's an incredibly dis-empowering move. And it doesn't even need to be that direct. In my experience in district organizing and outreach, I saw adults "forgetting to share" mailings and information about regional events with youth groups, refusing to let youth representing district structures speak at their church (and yes, youth existed on the district governing bodies for the SOL PURPOSE of reaching out to local youth and making the district more generally accountable), or,. simply, by failing to help youth recruit dedicated youth allies and advisors.<BR/><BR/>YRUU isn't treating congregations anyway. YRUU was simply offering the radical idea that youth require actually <I>ministry</I> and <I>trust</I>. What is threatening about that for you?<BR/><BR/>And, excuse me? I'm trying to remain calm here, but payback?<BR/><BR/>When has the ball ever been in the court of youth? Time after time after time, the story is the same. Youth, with the support of dedicated adult allies, try to create structures to minister to their communities to make up for the failure of local congregations. And time and again, that power is stripped from them by adults within the UUA, in local congregations, and pretty much everywhere else. Y'all have all the resources. Youth have never been anything but the underdog, and YRUU has never asked for anything but to be taken seriously.<BR/><BR/>-Heather Vail.Heatherhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18299310334882299917noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-974612240166391268.post-76778752687419138372008-02-13T14:40:00.000-05:002008-02-13T14:40:00.000-05:00"Top-down communication between district leaders a..."Top-down communication between district leaders and local youth groups is often blocked by wary adults in congregations unclear on their proper roles as intermediaries."<BR/><BR/>I read that as implying "Any concerns those adults might have are automatically invalid, and they should submit to their proper place as receivers of top-down communication."<BR/>YRUU has been treating congregations that way, here and there, for a while. Now it's payback time. Unfortunately, revenge is not always justice; but in my opinion, district and continental YRUU have rarely treated congregations as equal partners, and without doing so, they're bound to lose support.Riley37https://www.blogger.com/profile/01688675764399762801noreply@blogger.com