| Who are we? |
AuthenticYouth is the Youth & Schools ministry of Scripture Union Ireland
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| What do we do?
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We work with school year groups for daylong retreats. These days are holistic and multi-sensory experiences where the team acts as facilitators to engage students with their concerns, opinions and needs in a safe environment. Wherever we can we support Christian Unions in Secondary Schools across the country by providing speakers and resources. We also run and support camps and events at the Scripture Union Adventure Centre, Ovoca Manor.
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| Why now? |
The culture that Irish youth are growing up in is becoming increasingly difficult and confusing for them. Never before has a nation of young people been so immensely impacted by what they see and hear through the media. In an environment of increasing divorce, unemployment and rising suicide rates, it seems that hurt is taking over and our materialistically driven nation is beginning to forget where true love, meaning and purpose comes from.
At AuthenticYouth, we believe that life has much more to offer than lies, sadness and questionable role models, and offer a genuine alternative for today’s Youth.
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| Why? |
We are motivated to do this work because we are inspired by the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. He treated everyone equally and reached out to all. As we read in the Gospels, He is still passionately pursuing all peoples using imperfect people like us (the AuthenticYouth team) to communicate His sacrificial love for the whole world, the source of meaning and worth. We aim to explain the Christian faith in a relevant way, through issue based talks, showing young people who Jesus is and how he feels about them, helping them to independently make positive decisions about their lives and help them deal with hurt and worldly lies. Beliefs cannot be imposed on anyone but we aim to show young people the truth of what the Bible says so they make informed decisions whether for or against.
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| What else? |
We also engage in a variety of other events and programmes that you can check out. One of the programmes we offer is a one-year internship (or ‘Gap Year’) for Christian young people to enable them to develop their faith and at the same time engage in practical training through working with young people, together with an academic training programme. Click here for more information, or contact us using the details below.
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| Feedback? |
We seek feedback from students and teachers to improve our programmes. These include secure Bebo & Facebook sites for student’s comments. From some 242 evaluation froms recently received, 81% were positive responses in terms of the impact of the retreats on participants life and faith.
Here are just a few comments:
"Many of my false opinions about God have been changed"
"The day inspired me to make positive choices"
"The retreat was the highlight of my year"
"I want God more in my life "
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