4 April 2017 | St Albans, UK [tedNEWS with Alastair Agbaje] This year is already on record as the most successful year for participation and community-led Global Youth Day (GYD); around the world, but especially in the Trans-European Division (TED).
Alastair Agbaje, TED GYD coordinator notes that “while we are still waiting for official figures and statistics from the World Church Youth department, we do know that we have exceeded well over 35 million impressions on social media. Our youth used various social media platforms such as the GYD app, Facebook and Twitter to share activities and projects.”
The TED provided seed funding to support 25 community led projects. Last year, Agbaje notes, there were only eight. “This demonstrates a huge improvement in participation and is a great example of our youth showing both a desire and an initiative to make a difference in their communities,” he says.
Serbia
Agbaje joined the Serbian team, sharing acts of kindness. Their purpose was to promote peace by giving out literature from the Desmond Doss story and giving flowers as an expression of love to the community. Vesna Švaner, a Member of Parliament from Bosnia & Herzegovina, walked through the Belgrade park and was so impressed with the group that she invited the youth director, Miroslav Gagić, and a few young people to come to her home in the near future for a meal and further discussion. She even published her experience on her parliamentary webpage.
Belgrade, Serbia and Newbold church in the UK were the two TED locations that formed part of the larger, Adventist World Church 24-hour live stream Internet broadcast. The TED featured 90 minutes of activities during the evening, from the UK, Greece, Norway, Denmark, Finland, Poland, Latvia, Cyprus, and Serbia.
“I was impressed with the creativity and the willingness our youth demonstrated to make a difference in their communities,” Agbaje enthuses. “They all did a brilliant job! I pray that these projects and community-led activities will continue throughout the rest of the year and we look forward to the next Global Youth Day, 17 March 2018!”
Denmark
Heidi Rasmussen, a young adult leader from Aalborg, Denmark states, “Our motivation to start this project is to not only have outreach through our charity shop, Happy Hand, but also to directly help some people who are just arriving in Denmark and are trying to establish a life in Aalborg. We hope to be able to help the refugees to know that Danish people, even though they enjoy their own personal space, can be very friendly and caring. . Also, we would like to show them God’s love by spending time with them, listening and caring for them.”
On Global Youth Day, Adventist youth in Aalborg made waffles, played board games and spent time with some of the refugees. “The refugees that we had met on the previous Thursday, came and were happy to talk with us, they really want to practice speaking Danish and have a hot drink,” Rasmussen said. “We are looking forward to spending more time with them in the future.”
Cyprus
Cyprus youth offered a free medical clinic and health promotion in Limassol. Even the local media were impressed, with the church community centre being highlighted by a journalist.
Marica Mirilov reflected that the “‘Serving community’ experience joined young people from different national and religious backgrounds and gave our small church community a positive identity.”
Having experienced the joy of giving and caring, immediate plans were made to continue with acts of kindness in Cyprus including a ‘Let’s do it’ cleaning project on Sunday, 2 April and to continue with their health promotion and seminars throughout April. This will also extend to Nicosia with the addition of visits to nursing homes and prisons.
Norway
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lvrfzWyHdmA&feature=youtu
“For me, the highlight of Global Youth Day was all the smiles on people’s faces,” states Melissa Myklebust – Associate Youth director in Norway. “People I don’t know, whom I’ll probably never see again, came up to me saying, ‘Is it really for free? I mean, are the waffles really for free?’, as if it was too good to be true.”
Norwegian youth noted how little it can take to make someone happy, and to spread a little love and hope to the people in the cities where we live. In Alta, in the far north, they are planning to continue acts of kindness throughout the coming year. Others are joining in and, according to Myklebust, “we are strongly encouraging others to do the same, to spread some love and smiles wherever they live!”
Hungary
In cooperation with ADRA Hungary, young people visited areas with disadvantaged and needy people, giving them gifts and aiming to serve them.
“Because of the nationwide rain,” Kristof Palotas, Youth director explains, “we focused on indoor projects like visiting elderly homes and orphanages, taking time to play with children, talk with people, listen to their stories, and bring joy to their life, also through giving out some gifts.”
He adds, “The best thing is that in most places these GYD projects were simply part of an ongoing processes. I also realised that in some places this day was an inspiring motivation for future action.”
Lativa
Alex Podbrezsky, a local church youth leader reported that some youth visited nursing homes, while other groups shared cups of tea in a public park. They also interviewed people regarding their views on creation and evolution.
“Through that activity our team has made two new friends that came to our church to learn more,” Podbrezsky states. “We believe this was truly God’s providence and we currently work to integrate these people into small home groups and into our youth activities at church, so that we become better friends.”
London, UK
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uSvJn6LMAM8
Pastor Alexandru Mareniuc reported on a myriad of activities across north-west London (Area 6D). “GYD 2017 proved that our youth are not just churchgoers – they actually want to ‘be the sermon’ where they live. This gave them power to talk about and show Christ to others.” They plan to build on that success by organising “GYD 2017 v2.0 towards the end of the year!”
These reports are just a small sample of the engagement that happened across the Trans-European Division. To record it all would probably take a book, but for Agbaje that is enough. The acts of kindness and witness on that day will continue to spill out across an entire year. [tedNEWS]
tedNEWS Staff: Victor Hulbert, editor; Esti Pujic, associate editor
119 St Peter’s Street, St Albans, Herts, AL1 3EY, England
E-mail: [email protected]
Website: www.ted.adventist.org
tedNEWS is an information bulletin issued by the communication department of the Seventh-day Adventist Church in the Trans-European Division.
