Youth Conference

INTERNATIONAL YOUTH CONFERENCE 2014: BONN, GERMANY

Red Card to Violence

January 13th to January 20th 2014

Chloe Kelly and Katelyn Hayes from Year 13 recently attended the International Youth Conference in Bonn, Germany with Miss Burns. The theme was ‘Violence’ and we worked with 37 other salesian workers from 15 different nations icluding Austria, Poland, Malta, Italy, Spain, Germany, Phillipines and Columbia. We discussed how we can use different action plans to raise awareness of the causes and consequences of all violence.

Chloe and Katelyn prepared a presentation on our work at St John Bosco and how we propose to tackle topics such as bullying.

The week was full of creativity, team buliding, life skills and debates. We participated in a 3 day dance theatre workshop to produce a piece of choreography to promote violence prevention. The girls then performed at the Don Bosco Forum in Bonn University and attended a panel discussion afterwards in which they were able to put one question to Cardinel Rodriguez and former German president Horst Kohler about how the church and its members can help to prevent stereotypes which can lead to violence.

To celebrate Don Bosco’s 200th birthday next year the girls were involved in recording a video message which will be sent world wide to all salesian work places. They will also be putting their action plan into place here at school and will share their knowledge and experience to make others aware of how they can make a difference.

Miss Burns said “Overall an amazing and beneficial trip in which the students and myself shared and learnt so much. The intercultural aspect of the event was not only interesting but an inspiration.”