All Issues articles – Page 76
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IssuesChild poverty on the rise
The new stats mapping the levels of child poverty across the UK are shocking. If you haven’t seen them already, stop reading this and go and look at what it says about your area. The numbers, showing how many children are living in families earning less than 60 per cent of the national median income, are particularly difficult to read if you’re looking at the worst affected areas – Tower Hamlets in London, Ladywood in Birmingham or Central Manchester. But shouldn’t we be just as shocked by the nine per cent in parts of Sheffield or Aberdeen too?
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IssuesCost of child sex offences
A senior police officer recently revealed the cost of investigating child sex offences is now an astonishing £1bn a year. This figure could treble by 2020. In just three years, the number of allegations has shot up by 80 per cent and in 2015, there were 70,000 investigations. When asked why, Simon Bailey, national police lead for child protection and abuse, said the opportunities provided by the internet, with children watching pornography and thinking it is normal, is driving the sharp increase.
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IssuesCost of child sex offences
A senior police officer recently revealed the cost of investigating child sex offences is now an astonishing £1bn a year. This figure could treble by 2020. In just three years, the number of allegations has shot up by 80 per cent and in 2015, there were 70,000 investigations. When asked why, Simon Bailey, national police lead for child protection and abuse, said the opportunities provided by the internet, with children watching pornography and thinking it is normal, is driving the sharp increase.
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IssuesWhat if a child is ‘at immediate risk’?
Our experts answer your questions on children’s and families ministry.
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IssuesRaising hope for the Chibok Girls
On 14th April 2014, over 250 young women were kidnapped from their boarding school in Chibok, a province in northern Nigeria, by militant terrorist group Boko Haram. One year on, 219 young women remain missing. Just think about all the things you’ve done in the past year.
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IssuesReady-to-use Parable: The ten cheerleaders
The kingdom is like ten cheerleaders, who took their pom poms and went to support their marathon runner. They took up their position and started cheering. Five of the cheerleaders were disorganised and brought nothing to drink for the event, and the other five took some bottles of water. When the runner was delayed the cheerleaders started to get thirsty so stopped cheering so loudly.
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Issues
Young People more charitable than ever
A charity is hoping to reverse decades of decline in young people donating money to good causes after a survey showed that young people have a great attitude towards charity despite giving less than older people.
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IssuesReady-to-use Mentoring: The Character Pyramid
This character pyramid is a resource that could easily structure a whole term of mentoring sessions. This session just covers the basic idea.
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The Last Word: Crying (with joy) in the Chapel
It’s always me. I have the uncanny knack, in any given situation, of blundering haplessly into anecdotal territory. So if there’s an open manhole cover, a banana skin or a social time-bomb nearby, I’m inevitably your man. I appear to be magnetically attracted to such things.
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IssuesReady-to-use Mentoring: YouTube Channels
YouTube channels are big business these days – teenagers are earning millions of pounds, getting millions of views each month and often making careers out of it. Of course, the majority of teenagers are consumers, spending hours watching this content. Yes, this can be unhealthy, but it can also be educational and it can actually raise aspirations in young people who might otherwise not have aspirations.
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IssuesThe Last Word: How I changed my mind
I had convinced myself that I was speaking the truth; whether it was spoken ‘in love’ or not, speaking the truth was the thing leaders were supposed to do. But the young woman in my office started crying, and something tipped sideways in my self-analysis.
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IssuesThe training course that changed my life
Anyone who has been through children’s ministry training knows that it provides a solid grounding for full-time children’s work. Courses provide students with new ideas, practical skills and helpful guidance, as well as a strong theological foundation. But training in this area offers much, much more than this. As well as acquiring knowledge, there is often a learning of habits, a changing of perspectives and even a transformation of character. The courses’ application to both head and heart helps to set children’s workers up, not only for their work, but for life. Even those who decide not to go into full-time children’s ministry find the training incredibly helpful. Former and current children’s workers across the country got in touch to share their experiences.
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IssuesHow a Residential Changed My Life
Taking your youth group away can feel harder than an expedition to Mars. But it’s worth it. We hear from five young people whose lives were changed dramatically on a trip with their youth group.
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IssuesKnife Crime: A change in culture
On the 14th September, more than 100 young people marched from the Aylesbury estate in Southwark to Steedman Street, where their friend, Mohammed ‘Moe’ Dura-Ray, was murdered. Flowers were laid, candles lit and prayers said close to the murder scene. Moe is not the first young person I know who has been stabbed and killed on the Aylesbury estate, nor was this the first time Moe had been stabbed
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Issues
Negative Stereotypes Hurt Teenagers' Job Chances
Over three quarters of teenagers believe that negative portrayals in the media are hurting their job prospects.
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IssuesChallenges facing young people
Central YMCA have released a report highlighting the challenges faced by British young people (aged 16-25). The Challenge of Being Young in Modern Britain report also looked at some of the biggest barriers to overcoming these challenges.
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Issues
Games Master: Party Challenges
This issue I’m going to do something different. Rather than games, I’m going to cover challenges. I’ve found that these can work very well
when you have a lot of kids but not a lot of space. Split your hall into various stations and at each station have a challenge. Then split the kids into teams with about five children in each team. Ideally you’d have the same number of teams as stations but it doesn’t matter if you have fewer teams. (If you have one more team than stations set up an extra drinks break station.) Give each team a minute to understand
and practise each challenge, and then three minutes to do as well as they can at each one. Rotate the team around the stations after each period. To find out the overall winner, give each team a point for the position they finish in at each station (best at that challenge = one point, second best = two points, etc), and the team with the fewest overall points wins. Emphasise in all the challenges that they should be working as a team. The challenges may seem easy but when you see the panic every time you call ‘ten seconds left!’ you’ll know it’s working well!
