Matt, Network editor says: This is the full, almost completely unedited, text of the conversation I had with Clare back in November 2008. Clare's experience and wisdom made me realise I was perhaps asking some of the wrong questions and has had a big influence on how the magazine shaped up. I'm really grateful to Clare for giving up her time to talk with us and the deep integrity she brings to youth work.
Matt: How do you take that anger, frustration, questioning of life that some young people will have anyway because of their experience of life, and direct that in a much more constructive way against injustice?
Clare: There are some young people who are really politically aware, but not all young people, because it’s just their friendship group. With some of those, it’s actually exposing them to the world and situations that are beyond their friendship group. So we can help them find their voice by letting them know there’s something to be shouting about.
So images on video – you obviously don’t want to be manipulative – but tapping into their heart is one of the things that we have done. Obviously many young people are sexually active, so when you’re looking at the sex industry and the facts behind that, there’s a connection with their life but in a totally different way. So on that, we got them to express their thoughts – one girl wrote lots of poems – you can be creative in the way you help people to process. So with the poems we sent it on to the organisation so she felt she was contributing to a bigger thing, and she was able to talk about that message in school in assemblies. We can help young people put together that sort of thing to educate others which is all part of using your voice.
With some other young people I find it really hard to channel their passion for injustice because… when I’m passionate about something it’s easier for young people to tag along with what I’m doing. So if I’m going on a demonstration or protest or I’m letter writing the young people can jump and join me. So I find the times when the young people are most active is when I am. So as a youth leader I have the responsibility to make the time for it because it’s one of those things that can get squashed out. With demonstrations, once you’re out of the loop with it, it can be hard to get back into it – when are the dates etc. So I think we have to be something the young people can imitate.
A lot of the campaigns stuff, so much is so wordy. You get stuff through the mail, but a lot of the letters you have to write intelligently and knowledgeably but that’s quite a lot of words that need to be read. A young person I work with said after reading Shane Claiborne’s Irresistible Revolution that it was only the second book he’d ever read. So we’re asking people who don’t read much to process a lot of information to be able to do it. So it’s helpful, if you’re doing that bit for them, you can talk it through with them rather than expect them to do it all themselves.
Matt: And how do you find it, if you’ve been working with a group of young people and you’ve done some work with them to engage their heart and mind, wake them up to ‘this is how the world is’, there’s a sense of ‘yeah I feel like I actually want to respond’ – what do find are the challenges with actually getting them to continue in the long-term, channelling that energy.
Clare: It works, I think, when there is one of one cause. So they can put everything into that one cause. Stop the Traffik was that one cause for us because the church could get behind it, the young people could get behind it, but it was also accessible to people outside the church – so we had the shop in the town centre with lots of creative ways of engaging young people with t-shirt making and signing declaration cards – they could actually do something by going out on the street to passers by. So it’s actually giving them tangible things that they can do, and they can quantify at the end of it – they can say ‘this is how many cards we got signed’.
Sometimes with letters you don’t get replies, and when you do get replies they are so blinking complicated – from John Redwood or whoever (and you feel they’ve just photocopied someone else’s reply – a ‘this is our stance’) – but then to understand that is really difficult isn’t it. I mean I really struggle to understand it – I don’t really know what their answer means! (laughs)
The Amnesty card signings are really great because a community can come together to write these cards and the stories are small enough to be able to access it, and again there’s something tangible - how many cards have you written? And actually that’s been really great, because young people on the fringes – they only have to write one or two cards.
And with demonstrations, they are making the placards and as they are making them we can ask ‘what slogan are you putting on?’, ‘why are you putting that slogan on?’ and going to a march and seeing loads of other people marching helps, because again, it’s a tangible – we are actually part of something here. So I would say always go for the more ‘concrete’ things they can get out of it. But at the end of the day, with most of the campaigning there isn’t concrete stuff because you don’t just get easy answers, do you? You have to fight for it.
Matt: Have you got an example of a person or a group where they got really excited about something and then it just fizzled out, and you’ve thought ‘how on earth do I get them to keep that kind of passion?’
Clare: That’s the biggest struggle I have, when it fizzles out. It’s hard to keep banging on about a cause unless you’re really feeling it. And many of the young people I’ve been working with are a bit flighty. They don’t seem to have enough… I don’t know what it is – they don’t seem to be able to motivate themselves. But it’s really hard cos I don’t want to have to flipping spoon-feed them the whole time. But I don’t think it’s just a young people’s thing – a lot of people like having stuff done for them. That is hard. So often now what happens is that when young people have been drinking, they get all melancholy – ‘Oh, I want to change the world and make a difference!’ – so I have to put up with lots of late-night phone calls of a drunken [says name of young person] going ‘Clare, I want to do so much for God, but I don’t know what to do!’ (laughs) But that is the reality!
One of the things I find really bizarre is that they like the big issues, but when it comes to not driving their car and walking everywhere they’re not so keen on it.
Matt: Why do you think that is?
Clare: I think convenience is one thing. But also, I think they don’t want to be challenged so much that they actually have to make a difference. It’s easy to have energy-saving light bulbs because it’s not actually putting you out that much. It’s like, ‘how can we be green and save the world without actually impacting us?’ (laughs). Especially in this sort of area there is that – people see ‘organic’ or ‘farmers market’ as a luxury that only the wealthy can afford, but actually if you only had meat once a week you would be able to afford it. And I think people generally don’t actually want to do anything that really puts them out. Unless they’re part of a group that is into that whole Eco scene, and then it’s part of their identity, so therefore they will go along with the values of that group.
Matt: So how do we change it then? As youth workers we’re trying to do long-term sustainable youth work with groups of young people, and it’s easy to get that big high – here’s a demonstration, here’s an issue, here’s what you should get passionate about – but then actually the day-in, day-out, small choices, genuinely radical lifestyle…
Clare: That is the thing we need to do, isn’t it.
Matt: But how do we do it?
Clare: Ok, number one, you do give the Shane Claiborne’s book, because, genuinely, that does hit the button with them – it hit the button with me. I know we can’t all live in a commune, but it is just that whole sense of one person, connecting with others, can make a difference in their local community. And so I do think that it is important that we do the big stuff, but there are people that are voiceless in our local community and actually how we live our lives day to day…
Number two, you have to make it a given, so it’s not just one Sunday a year we’ll talk about this. It’s like the whole sex thing – you don’t just do a sex talk once a year, but you make it part of your discussions generally. So I think it has to be part of your DNA as a youth group, and of yourself actually. To be honest, I’m not the best person for this cos I feel challenged all the time about my life-style, but actually – how are you as a youth leader living? You need to be modelling something and they need to be seeing that.
And then number three, giving them ways all the time about how they can get involved. There’s a good book, L is for Lifestyle by Ruth Valerio – there’s loads of little things you can pick up from that. Also, Tearfund have this great thing on Facebook (and Bebo) called SuperBadger where young people can campaign on different issues and it’s really accessible for them. But at the end of the day, young people need to be doing this themselves. It’s like the whole Bible-reading thing, if they’re not doing it themselves there’s only so much you can teach them. We need to inspire them – youth leaders have a responsibility to inspire and model – but ultimately they do need to get off their own backsides and do it.
Matt: So how do we do that then?
Clare: I don’t know Matt!
Matt: I know you don’t (laughs). But you are good at it nonetheless! So how is it that in youth work, when you are working with young people, that you empower them to have that sense of ownership? So any of us who have done youth work will have found that you can journey with young people for a long time but you still find that some young people will feel ‘I can’t do this without you – if you don’t inspire me, if you don’t put something in my hand, I feel like I can’t engage and I’m not passionate’. But there are ways of overcoming that – because it does happen doesn’t it?
Clare: Well yeah. I think one thing is to give them the space. So actually if you’re always putting yourself alongside them you’re not giving them that space. I think that sometimes throwing them in at the deep end is a good thing – I think we sometimes shy away from that, but I think it’s good for them to be chucked right in it – I think that’s ok. I mean don’t give them so much rope that they’ll hang themselves with it, but a sense of there’s a space – it’s ok for them to muck up a bit. So for example, I knew with [says name of young person], I knew he was passionate about the American elections, so I gave him space in our church service to pray for the elections and to say a few words about that as well. And he was very good – I thought he might go on a rant, but he was very good. He did show his colours when it came to talking about Bush, but other than that it was quite a measured thing. But some churches might shy away from giving a young person a public platform on those kinds of topics when you don’t actually know what they’re going to say. (I mean, I get scared every time he speaks at a church meeting, I think ‘what’s he going to say? What’s he going to say?’)
I also think there’s also a question - in our services, what are we talking about? Last Sunday, we did a service on institutional racism – so are we talking about the big issues that inspire young people and they can have a voice on? Because institutional racism is a massive thing, but as the guy leading asked, is our church institutionally racist? So that brings it back down to home as well. So do give them the issues which are big, but also that they can apply to their own situations. And then to give them space to talk into that – so the service wasn’t just one person talking at us. It was we’re all sharing together as there’s space for the young people to feed back into that big discussion. (pause) What was the question again?
Matt: It was, how do we actually enable young people to own that radical commitment?
Clare: Ok yeah. So
1) give them space
2) give them opportunity to speak into structures
3) give them opportunities to challenge us as a church, even if it makes us uncomfortable, especially the youth leader.
What money is there available for them to access? So we pay for people to go on courses – we have a pot of money. [Says name of young person] has a real heart for justice stuff so we paid for her to go on some young leaders’ training. Do we the church actually commit financially to giving these young people opportunities. We also have a budget for mission. We only pay up to about £350, but if people do a year out or want training then there’s money to go towards that. (We’re obviously in a really fortunate position that we can do that.)
Matt: You were saying before that if young people are part of a group that is really into Eco stuff – that’s their whole identity, dress code, their subculture revolves around that – then that becomes a way in which their identity becomes something quite deep. Is there value, and can it be done, in actually fostering small communities where there is a real identity that we are going to make radical choices with every aspect of life? Am I just describing the church?
Clare: Well… you can create cultures within church, because we always have to do that – especially if it’s a negative culture, because not all cultures are good cultures. But a whole subculture… I think we’d be in danger of playing God, because you always have to work with what you’ve got. I was always on the fringe of that sort of culture – a lot of my friends were quite hardcore, you know – People and Planet, really part of that. I’ve got friends that got arrested. So I suppose you can expose people to part of that culture and it would be their choice whether they got involved or not.
I don’t know, maybe you could create…
Matt: But not necessarily Eco. You have subcultures that are all about saving the planet. Which is great. But Shane Claiborne perhaps is an example, and the Simple Way community, where because there are people who are bonded by that identity together, they’re forming a…
Clare: But didn’t people come and join, rather than all being formed by the grass roots?
Matt: That’s a good question. I think maybe it was a bit of both, from reading his story. But that’s the question I have in my mind. Because I think in youth work we foster community among young people…
Clare: Yeah I think it depends what you expose them to. Cos if you take them to Soul Survivor each week then you have created a certain expectation of worship and of a theology, and all that is part of a culture isn’t it. Whereas if you took them to Greenbelt each year then again you’d get a different… And it depends whether you want your youth group to all be the same.
But then things like saving the planet should be part of every single youth group and every young person.
But then (sighs), this is the thing you see. [Says name of young person] wants to set up a justice group. Fine. I gave her the space, gave her the support, but again she didn’t really have the tools herself to lead this group. And she didn’t have the time cos she’s got GCSE’s, A levels, all that kind of stuff. So it falls on the youth worker’s shoulders to do it, and obviously, unless it’s a priority for the youth worker… which it should be, but you know…
Matt: There’s a lot going on and it’s hard to do…
Clare: Cos it’s a whole ministry area in itself isn’t it, really?
But then it’s good isn’t it because things like Soul Survivor, it would used to be more like a one-off, but it’s much more part of their DNA now than it ever used to be. So you must be able to make it part of a group’s identity, because that’s what they’ve done.
I mean the church has gone a long way in the way it sees evangelism. It’s not just preaching now, is it? It’s seen as your actions and that kind of stuff, and it needs to have a global dimension to it, and that’s an amazing shift it’s made, relatively quickly I’d say. It’s like a given now – you don’t have to justify it.
Another idea you can do – and the young people can do this – is to do a Green audit on your church. So what toilet roll is the church using? What bleach is the church using? So then it’s something quite tangible that the young people can do, that they can take back to the leadership and say ‘this is our green audit on the church’. Or how many people are cycling to church, how many people are driving, to try and get the carbon footprint of the church. And then they could lower it by informing the church, and then they’ve made a difference with a whole group of people.
Matt: Thinking about the young people you’ve worked with who, deep inside of them – for whatever reason – do have a very passionate frustration with the world, a real questioning of the way the world is, a real desperate sense that it has to be different, and just a lack of ability to know what to do with that. So it may come out in destructive behaviour. So these are not necessarily people that you have to wake up to the way the world is. These are people who already know that the world is not as it should be. Can you think of a time when you’ve worked with some of these young people and been able to redirect them to take that positive passion that’s expressed in destructive ways and actually redirect that against genuine injustice?
Clare: I don’t know if I’ve ever really come across that kind of young person. I mean [says name of young person] is angry with the world. We’ve given him opportunities in terms of leadership which he hasn’t taken. So actually structural things don’t always help. So at church meetings – this is giving them the bigger picture. I know church meetings aren’t the world, but actually that’s one vehicle for his voice to be heard and actually be a valid voice. So how do we enable people like that – how do we enable their voices to be heard in our own communities, and are our structures enabling that, or are they so ‘businessy’ that they’re hard for the young people to engage with them. So I think we need to relook at our own models of decision-making so that it’s smaller but they are able to engage with local stuff (so church meetings are local stuff). But also, out of the knife crime that happened in the area, that group of young people got together and put on their own concert to raise awareness of knife crime, and obviously as a tribute to their friends, which they did themselves. Youth worker input was there, but it was quite minimal. And then the young people themselves put together creative DVD that could go out into schools about knife crime. But that was perhaps because it was such a personal issue that they were able to do that. But we gave them the space to do that – so whether it’s providing a literal space. But with the ‘bigger’ issues we’ve found it harder because we’ve exposed them to different things, but again it’s up to them to go for it – you can’t make someone make that connection. I find that quite frustrating – that sometimes there’s only so much you can do; you can’t make those choices for them.
Clare Hooper is Youth Minister at Wokingham Baptist Church where she has been developing youth work for over ten years.
Matt Valler is National Youthwork Coordinator for Tearfund and editor of Network magazine.