On Working with Youth Groups

Brother Trésor Malenga Nduba is currently a student of biology and chemistry at the I.S.P.–a college in Lubumbashi, DRC. Brother Trésor also works with youth in the local parishes. In the clip below, Trésor discusses some of the goals of the local youth movement, as well as how his peers view him as a Xaverian Brother.
 

 

Transcript: “We are trying to energize one another, so that we, together, we may work for our church; together we may plan for the future of our church.

“So especially in our continent, in our society, they [the youth] usually think that the church belongs to the clergy–the priest, the religious, and sisters. So how to tell them that all of us, we are members of the church, we are Christians, we need to plan for the future of our church; it’s very challenging. Now we need to use a common language, so that they may listen, they may understand that all of us we are members by virtue of being baptized in our church.

“So one day I was very very surprised because during a sharing they told me that ‘we always see you like one of us. Not as a religious who is thinking that he is special; someone who knows everything. But someone who is one of us, because you also ask our advices, our point of view.’ So I was very astonished and I think, maybe, it is some kind of…a part of ordinariness, yeah, yeah [laughs]. I didn’t know that is the way I am behaving, but they told me one day, ‘we think that you are one of us.'”