Reports - Youth Section groups
by the Youth Section Worldwide
Netherlands
The summer provided us with a good warmth for our newborn Youth Section! She is already growing and expanding. Out of the resting time of August came new and fresh energy for the year to come. Since Johannes moved to Sweden for his Master, Janna is ‘alone’ as youth worker, but the core group is getting stronger and broader. In the time ahead of us, we want to find ways to organise the group which can carry the Youth movement broader and in this way make it less dependable on the Youthworker(s). This takes time, effort and energy but we are in positive mind-state. How can we collaborate together? We struggle with inclusion and exclusion; finding balance between opening up and having a strong, responsible foundation.
We receive lots of questions from elderly groups/individuals within the society to collaborate or help them with questions or ideas, or they are just interested in us; for example the Christian Community, Member groups, Study centre, etc. Part of this area of work is organising a ‘generation-day’ where young and old members can meet.m There are lots of new project-idea’s coming up and some of them are already starting this Fall. The first week of September, we have started a Meditation course for young people of ten evenings, providing them with a basic in Anthroposophical meditation and exercise.
Next to that, we want to start ‘open evenings’ (or ‘soirees’ as Faucon likes to call them) where Anthroposophical-interested young people can gather and talk about a subject and discuss this in the light of Anthroposophy, and of course meet and socialise. The big conference we are heading towards is at the end of September: the Michael days (this is the conference we all mentioned in our speech during the foundation ;) ).This huge conference consists of four days for 300 young people in nature, celebrating Michael. Every year, we experience this as a strong and fiery impulse for the youth to stand up within the spirit. Lots of new and interested people come from this to the Youth Section; they feel the call of Michael. We feel very connected to this and that’s why Floor, Jan-Thijs, Faucon and Leo are giving a workgroup, Janna is in the organising team and lots of our friends are coming. Nana will give her performance and a workgroup as well, and Helmy Abdouleish from Sekem will come and work with us/speak. Lastly; the organisation of our Midwinter celebration conference has also taken off. We started anew with questions we felt were very important to consider; why are we doing this? With what goal? What are people looking for? What are we organising anyway, a celebration, an activism weekend or a conference? Can we put them together? Considering the International YS.Jesse is taking part in the Spiritual Research project, Johannes and Janna are taking part in the Youth Class group, Janna is taking part in the Summer Conference organising and the February Days organising.
Janna.
Belgium
The youth in Belgium interested in anthroposophy are a network of individuals – friends –, who see value in this spiritual philosophy and its fruits for daily practice. We are not yet organized as an official Youth Section.
One of our main initiatives in Belgium is the “Zomeruniversiteit Antroposofie” (summer university anthroposophy). In this summer week, a group of engaged students, diverse in age and familiarity to anthroposophy, deepens their understanding with the support of lecturers and workshops hosts, covering a variety of topics. Through the shared meals and living spaces, the content interweaves with the encounters amongst the participants.
Last July, the 8th edition of the “Zomeruniversiteit” took place.
Young people in Belgium also take on individual – anthroposophical based – initiatives in child care, youth conferences, curative and social therapy, biodynamic farming, art therapy and more. In different places in the country, there are study groups (book or theme centered) in which young people take part.
Hannes.
Czech Republic
In the Czech Republic, everything is in the very beginning. There was no meeting of the youth yet (or no I know about).
Last year, I was looking for other young people interested in anthroposophy. Finally, I found two who are willing to meet this fall. Everything is still in process, so I will see how it shapes up.
Klára.
Argentina
By now we are a group of 13 individuals, with many particular interests, as education, agriculture, medicine, eurythmy, theology and more, focused mainly in organizing meetings for young people with questions and interests similar to ours. On this year it has been made a day workshop about sexuality, some work for a spanish translation of the book “Youth and the Etheric Heart”, the group has helped by making toys for a children’s home, and we held the fifth year of Neolaia; a meeting for young people from 17 to 35 years old, living together two days in a school, sharing lectures and workshops.
In the group there is a will to start doing more activities together, like studying or forming dialogues between us about actual and local issues.
Nahuel.
Neolaia V youth meeting.
We had as central subject: identity. We’ve been around 50 participants, and four lecturers: Constanza Kaliks, Mariano Kasanetz, K’anchay Qollyur and Joan Melé. Each lecture invited us to go deeper in ourselves, with a bigger impulse for self-knowledge and a more harmonious relationship with ourselves. And through the games and dynamics that we coordinated we could digest everything that happened through the meeting.
On this year we made a workshop of clay modelling for accompanying the subject, identity, and how it is modelled. We made bowls that reflected our internal and external self-image, with this malleable and gentle material.
We can say the meeting cleared fears from the future, bringing hope, for the organizing group, as for some of the participants with which we could speak about it. We found hope from self transformation.
Rocío.
Uruguay
The history of the Youth section in Uruguay began about 7 years ago, when a small group of young people decided to gather and share their concerns and their common interest in anthroposophy.
Wanting to learn about the work done in other countries, some of them traveled and attended the Active Meeting held in 2010 in Brazil. When they returned, these young people decided to take this impulse to their country, and the following year they made a call to form a youth group in Uruguay. Thus was born a beautiful and varied group, which met quarterly to study anthroposophy and practice different forms of art.
That same year, part of the group traveled to the international meeting that was held in Argentina (Waynakay). A lot was lived, learned and shared during those days. During the next three years the youth group in Uruguay remained active, trying to keep their encounters fruitful and with the intention of to carrying out the shared desires.
Over time many of the members traveled abroad to study, while others committed to different initiatives both in Uruguay and in other countries, or had to dedicate more time to their work and training. The result was that by 2014 the group had dispersed.
This year (2017), those of us who were actively involved in different initiatives wanted to reactivate the youth section, as new young people have approached anthroposophy in recent years. This is why in September we traveled to the meeting of the Youth section of Argentina (Neolaia), where we experienced a powerful community impulse. We returned with the certainty of wanting to make that impulse fructify in our country too.
Bruno and Annie.
Israel
We are a group of 9 knights from the Holy Land, who got to know each other through the Anthroposophical Foundation Year in Harduf, northern Israel. We are all taking part in the Anthroposophical path as Studies & Art training.
The group gathered in 2016 with connection to the Youth Section work, with the impulse of creating a meeting space where we can find and explore our questions with each other and to bring awareness to our shared journey.
A new initiative is now taking place in our work - the translation of "Parzival" epos into Hebrew while searching the ways to fund and fulfill it.
As a part of the process, we opened a studying group to get to the depth of the story and to fertilize the project.
We send you all a big Shalom Alei'chem and a warm hug from Israel.
Roi.
Ecuador. VII Panamerican Meeting.
The VII Youth Panamerican was an international anthroposophical meeting organized by the Youth Section of Ecuador and the organizing team of the VII Panamerican of Anthroposophy.
With regard to all natural disasters and the environmental changes of our times, we chose to address the subject “The messages of the earth for humanity through natural phenomena”. People from Germany, Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador and Italy met in Quito, Ecuador’s capital city, from August 1st to 6th, 2017, with the purpose of understanding and acting in front of this changes.
The aim of the meeting was precisely that: To share knowledge and tools to understand the position of each human being on earth and, from that point, act in an integral way to deliver apositive act to the world. The congress was conducted through conferences and workshops dictated by great teachers. To understand the duty of youth from an anthroposophical perspective, we received a lecture called “America’s responsibility in the development of the conscious soul”. The conference was held by Patricio Jaramillo, member of the Michael Branch of Ecuador. The lectures helded by Bernd Ruf, founder of Emergency Pedagogy in Germany, brought into discussion what Emergency Pedagogy is and how it seeks to overcome the trauma. The Emergency Pedagogy workshops taught by Christopher Huditz showed us how to perform healing activities through games and rhythms. Singing and Eurythmy workshops, given by Grecia Alban, Bettina and Roberto Rossi, complemented the knowledge about the actions to be taken and activities to perform in front of a person who has suffered a trauma.
We also had lectures that sought to guide young people to understand themselves and the world. We had a lecture of Alberto Baldeón “Being young today”; which sought to explain how to handle an impulse of creation or action. Afterwards, the conference on Andean worldview of being young, dictated by Jose Maldonado or Ushku Chukuri, showed a light over other ways of understanding what means to be young in other cultures. Finally, the lecture by Martiza Leiva, Ecuadorian anthroposophical doctor, who spoke about salutogenesis.
The congress was successfully held and some new ideas emerged. On the final day of the congress, Bernd Ruf spoke of his desire to form a worldwide network of Emergency Pedagogy formed by the different Youth Sections existing until 2019.
On the other hand, in the Youth Section Ecuador the initiative to create a coffee shop to self-fund the Section and strengthen it as a group was born.
We sincerely thank each one of the people involved in this meeting and helped to achieve its goals. The following are two testimonies from our dear participants:
“The congress in Ecuador was incredibly well organized by the Youth Section. Throughout the whole time it was interesting, inspiring and enriching. It was a great mix of workshops, lectures, music and eurhythmy. The team of the Youth Section in Ecuador was warm and welcoming. They truly organized an amazing event that touched many people deeply”
Sophie, Germany.
“A great surprise; as our friend Roberto Rossi would say, to meet a group of young people with that maturity, with that union, with that strength to be able to organize something that fills us, those who have already come this way for some time and who equally revitalize us and give us strength to continue with the work but in a beautiful way that stays in the soul to strengthen the work that follows. So grateful.”
Emilio, Argentina