Youth Committee

About Youth Committee

The Youth Committee (YC) facilitates communication and exchange of resources and information among youth, youth workers, and the committees, groups, and NYYM staff with a concern for youth within New York Yearly Meeting. The Youth Committee supports Spirit-led, intergenerational youth work in monthly meetings and worship groups, regional meetings, and yearly meeting. The committee articulates to the yearly meeting as a whole the comprehensive needs and goals concerning youth, as well as names and brings forward the gifts of our younger Friends.

Our vision for the youth of New York Yearly Meeting

We want our young people to have a home in our yearly meeting and a sense of having internalized shared values - around a nonviolent approach to conflict, around decency, around authenticity - regardless of whether they remain Friends as adults. We want our young people to be grounded in Friends’ history, faith and practice, and have a language to describe them. We want them to have experience being guided by the Spirit, both as individuals and in community. We want them to have experience of their own gifts and leadings that they can step into as adults. And we want them to do all of these things in a community that cherishes them and their families at all stages of life.

The Youth Committee is comprised of representatives from, but is not limited to, Junior Yearly Meeting, Oakwood Friends School, and the Powell House Youth Program, Young Adult Concerns Committee. In addition, the committee has nine at-large members,

While each committee named above has the oversight of their own work, the Youth Committee ensures that the safety of youth and youth workers is part of their considerations. Friends with a leading to work with youth—in ways not covered by existing programs/outside of the existing programs—are welcome to bring their leading to this committee for seasoning.

Link to the Committee's Handbook page.

Youth Institutes

Link to the Youth Institutes page.

Youth Institutes include hands-on training in various aspects of youth work per the interest of participants through a choice of mini-workshops The Institutes offer a forum for participants to:

• Share what is working in monthly meetings and regions
• Explore ways through the difficulties encountered
• Discuss frameworks for thinking about programming for youth.

Programs for Families, Youth, and First Day Schools

Link to Programs page.

Resources for Members and Clerks of NYYM Committees

Guidelines for Committee Service—Relevant sections from the yearly meeting Handbook on committe membership and committee clerking.

Guide for Committee Clerks—A resource packet designed to make clerking a NYYM committee easier.

Coordinating Committee Timeline—A guide to the year's tasks for coorcinating committee clerks.

Accountability Queries—Queries for use by committees and the coordinating committees for considering the spiritual state of the yearly meeting's committees.

Documents