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We're 1 year old this week! To celebrate, we put together a brilliant video of the highlights from the past year, and some teasers about the year ahead.
Thanks to everyone who's made the first year of Million Minutes so absolutely amazing! And together, we'll 'make the change' in 2012!
Young people heard an amazing message of hope this week from Million Minutes Champion Margaret Mizen. "You can make a difference," she said, " and make your communities safe places. And you can help change the future of our society. You can make our society a peaceful place instead of an angry place." Three schools in Birmingham hosted Margaret Mizen for a brilliant roadshow to highlight Million Minutes as the schools' Lenten charity for 2012. St Augustine's Redditch, St Thomas More, Nuneaton and Bishop Walsh in Sutton Coldfield all welcomed the Mizens to hear about their inspiring work in South East London.
"It's been amazing to spend time with the young people of the Birmingham this week. I'm thrilled that so many young people will be staying silent this Lent for Million Minutes," said Danny Curtin, Million Minutes Trustee.
Schools interested in staying silent this Lent should check out our Resources page at millionminutes.org/resources
Margaret and Barry Mizen will join the Birmingham diocesan Million Minutes silent walk on Sunday 5 February at 2.45pm leaving from Newman Centre/ St Thoma of Canterbury Catholic Church, Haywood Drive, Tetenhall, Wolverhampton, WV6 8RF. Followed by Mass at 5.15. Margaret and Barry will also give a short talk. Details from Chris Walker: chrisxwalker@doctors.org.uk
Maybe I'm biased, but Birmingham is where it's at. Although it's about a decade since I last lived in God's own Archdiocese, it's still a very important part of my story. And my story is the story of BCYS.
I'm a Stafford boy, and BCYS for me was Diane Lamb, a fearless woman with a big laugh and a dodgy car. I wonder if she still has them both?!
From my stint in the Staffordshire Youth Team (helping to run youth Masses) when I was about 16, to the ecumenical work I did with Churches Together in England a couple of years later and even representing England and Wales at a memorable Catholic conference in Hungary aged about 20, BCYS was all about offering me and my peers opportunities to get involved and grow.
And then there was the Lourdes trip and the Walsingham jaunts, and even a World Youth Day. All very Catholic.
They were important times, growing in faith along with a group of amazing young people, with the support of greats of the Archdiocese like Diane Lamb, Eddie Clare (a big MM supporter!), Mark Crisp, Maria Bracken (Robinson back in my day!) and Jo Boyce. I was always a bit daunted by their all-round aceness, frankly!
So it's a massive thrill to be able to work with BCYS as partners in this November's silence now that I'm all grown up (29 going on 19). Two brilliant Catholic youth charities doing what they do best to support and encourage a new generation of young people grow into the people the world needs them to be.
It's testament to BCYS' long term vision. How did Oscar Romero put it? "We are prophets of a future not our own". That's about right. And I'm not the only one, you know. Birmingham youth are spread the world over (I saw one working with young people in New Zealand the other month).
So let's hear it for BCYS, but SHHH! let's do it in silence!
Daniel Hale is Campaigns Officer at Progressio and a Trustee of Million Minutes. He lives in London, in constant sadness that it's not quite as good as Birmingham.
Thanks to the more than 130 young people, Champions, clergy, church colleagues, parishioners, friends and assorted hangers on who came to the MM launch last night. What a brilliant event! Our Champions said some inspirational words and it was great to see so many people who care so much about young people. As part of the eventing we got people to pledge to stay silent. We were bowled over by the response: 378,720 minutes already! We're more than a third of the way to our million minutes target. So thanks to everyone who pledged - we'll be getting in touch with you all to make sure you heave everything you need to make a splash!
So it's game on for MM now - we have another 700,000 minutes to go, so don't forget to sign up or get someone else to! Thanks again to everyone for coming - we can do it!
So, after a great deal of effort, this is it. It doesn’t look like much but it really is. It’s our brand new charity number, and we’re very pleased with it. In a very practical way, it means we can set up our online giving portal, we can print resources, and we can get letterheads and business cards. So far so boring. But it also means that our mission has been recognised as being expressly charitable: “We see a world in which young people make a difference, where they are the difference. Where they enable the transformation needed for everyone to live a life of dignity. Million Minutes campaigns with young people, raises money, and funds youth action and advocacy activities that give voice and support to young people to transform society, inspired by Catholic social teaching”
It might just seem like a hoop we had to jump through, but from where we’re standing, it’s one of the major hurdles we had to get over in order to make the Million Minutes magic happen. It opens the door to a great deal more work, but I reckon it’s a great start.
Thousands of Catholics from all over England and Wales are being urged to stay silent for up to 24 hours to raise money to fund projects supporting young people as part of an innovative new charity to be launched this month.
Read moreSilence keeps inspiring us. We wrote off to register the charitable company this week, with Stephen Davies and Nicky Pisa who are joining us on the Board. Terribly grown up! And all you tech-heads out there, we bought some other domains (not the .com one, though - it's advertising games in America, apparently), so we'll be secure in our silent online home.
Last up in our little tour of recent activity, we've commissioned a very able young fellow to snaz the site up, we've asked two people to join us as Champions (both famous in their own ways), and got randomly festive at the thought of Christmas.
And we planned the launch - January 31th (the feast of St Don Bosco, the patron saint of young people). Put it in your diary. So it's all hands on deck, frankly.
Kicking off our online presence!
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