I was fortunate to be a part of building a Youth Leadership Team (YLT) at our parish. A few youth that possess good leadership skills were asked to help write the "bi laws", application process and expectations of the new team.
This process took over 6 months to get in order. After everything was in place, applications were taken and the team was established.
Part of our YLT is to work on a Pastoral Project each year. The priest picked the topic of Forgiveness for the first undertaking. The team tackled refining the project for a year, meeting once per month for one and a half hours each session.
First they researched forgiveness and what it means to them. They worked on a "speech" for the presentation for months, making sure that it would be well understood by the audience. It was important that they weren't trying to "teach" about forgiveness, but rather to go in depth on what it meant to them.
Then they needed a project to go with it. The team decided to have cards of 3 different colors that they passed out after the speech presentation and asked the parish family to each write one sentence or draw something that forgiveness means to them. Everyone - even children.
The YLT had decided early on that they wanted to arrange the cards into something - they chose a heart. We had a canvas made - it is about 4'x4' and the YLT arranged the cards, placing them on the canvas so that each card can be viewed.
Our YLT is know as PULSE - Passionately Uniting & Leading Students to Evangelize
