'Young People are Worth More Than All the Gold in the World because they are Sons and Daughters of God' - Cardinal Joseph Cardijn, Founder of the YCW

I work for YCW (Young Christian Workers). YCW is a charity and organisation founded by Cardinal Jospeh Cardijn who saw the injustices young workers had to face and saw how the reality of young people contradicted what our faith tells us our reality should be like. He believed that this contradiction needed a pastoral response and so created a method - See, Judge, Act or the Review of Life. Young people come together in their local areas, accompanied by chaplains and adult companions, to look at their reality as young people, judge their reality using their faith and take action to change it. The organisation is present in many countries around the world and is for young people ages 13-30 years old. YCW aims to reach out to young people on the fringes of society, calling them out of isolation into a community. Young people become leaders in their own lives as they take action to change their realities. YCW believe young people are the experts of their own realities and can make a difference, in fact are the difference. Our founder said, 'Young people are worth more than all the gold in the world because they are sons and daughters of God'. We aim to help young people understand their worth and God given dignity and encourage them to link their life and faith.
I work for the YCW movement in England and Wales. We are based in London but have a presence in Cardiff, Salford, Brentwood, Southwark, Birmingham, Westminster, Shrewsbury and Middlesborough. My job is to help the development of the movement in these areas. This involves visiting the groups and giving them resources, which they can use to do the Review of Life in their areas. We write the resources and produce them, we train our young people and we train the adults and adult companions who accompany them. We believe that everything is by the young people, but nothing without the chaplain. We run a programme for our young people ages 13-17 called Impact. I am Impact Coordinator. I work with Phil, who is the other member of the national team and Jo who is our office manager. We are all employed by the charity. We have a national executive committee made up of a national president, treasurer, chaplain and an assistant to the national president, assistant to the national secretary (that's me) and assistant to the national chaplain. Myself, Phil, the national president and national treasurer live together in our community house in London with our chaplain (the assistant to the national chaplain).
I got involved in YCW 6 years ago. A friend of mine was attending the first meeting to set up YCW in Cardiff and didn't want to go alone so asked me to join her. Together we were part of and ran the first Impact group in Cardiff, went on to set up a YCW group and then became regional team (voluntarily) for Cardiff. I was then offered the job to work on national team. I started in September 2010 and will remain working for the movement until August 2012.