WelCom February/March 2025
Chris Duthie-Jung
At the end of last year, 70 year-12 students and 17 young leaders gathered at Forest Lakes Camp, Ōtaki, to prepare for life as school and parish leaders for 2025.
The 20th edition of the Young Catholic Leader (YCL) camp, which began in 2004, once again celebrated the energy and creativity of young people while developing the insight and experience leadership entails.
At the end of each year, the YCL programme focuses on learning about servant leadership as disciples of Jesus Christ for the student leaders from Catholic colleges – and a parish or two – for the year ahead. Using an activity-based learning approach, the camp gives participants opportunities to understand and practice self-awareness, communication and planning.
The end of year 2024 programme was immersed in student-led prayer, celebrating Eucharist with Archbishop Paul Martin sm and Reconciliation with eight visiting archdiocesan clergy, as the students wrestled with how to make faith our centre, as our Catholic Colleges do.
The programme had a dynamic team of 18 leaders who explored leadership with the students. Six were fresh out of Year 13 as leaders themselves. Free time was ever popular with the renowned Forest Lakes mudslide, waterslide, pool, volleyball, ten-pin bowling and just ‘chilling’ as teens. The friendships developed among students from the different colleges proved almost as important as teambuilding within the college groups.
While all Catholic colleges in the archdiocese make a real effort to have their representatives attend the programme, the ‘award for commitment’ must surely go to Garin College, who again brought a full quota of 12 students from Nelson then faced the challenges of cancelled ferries when heading home. Special mention too to the intrepid three students, each from three different state colleges, who joined the programme to meet and learn alongside the student groups from the Catholic colleges.
Together, all the students enjoyed lots of learning, lots of fun and they left set for leadership in 2025!
