Pinoy Youth

Wanna share an insight from the Youth Specialties Blog written by author Chuck Bomar. The post is about why we need to reach out to College students. (The sub-headings are direct quotations but the comments are mine.)

1. High school graduates don’t feel a part of the larger church.

This is specially true for students from the provinces who study in the cities. They cannot integrate themselves into the local churches and so have to look for alternative sources for spiritual nourishment. If they find one, good. But most often than not, they don’t. It would be important then to go to the place where they can be found–in the campus.

2. The college-age stage of life is a transition stage.

College is a time for one’s life to get defined. It is during this time that youth get to realize their directions and live their lives for what they think best.

3. Higher education has changed thought processes.

College is really a time for youth to explore their world and move on to maturity. It is a difficult time for some but it is actually an important transition stage. If Christians with their message are there to help students in this transition, they will be able to navigate through this more easily.

Smoking is really a big issue among teenagers these days. A lot of kids feel that they can be cool and “astig” if they smoke. When I was in High School, some of my peers started experimenting with cigarettes. Perhaps they saw their fathers or some of their siblings smoking, they got curious then started smoking, too.

If there is one vice that brings nothing but woe to its user, it is smoking. Imagine, you are actually using your own money for something that burns you, literally. Apart from the seeming psychological benefit, smoking does not bring anything else but sickness to the smoker and to the people who will be unfortunate enough to inhale second-hand smoke.

Thankfully for teenagers, team sports can help teenagers avoid smoking. By becoming active team sports participants, teenagers can avoid the urge to smoke. If these same kids get exposed to too much movies, though, the positive aspects of involvement in team sports can be undermined.

image courtesy of journalletoile.com

In an article at Forbes.com, a study confirmed that too much exposure to movies presenting smoking as cool can be detrimental to teenagers, in terms of their choices to smoke or not.

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This is the transcript of my presentation at the Celebrate Family Seminar of the Greenhills Christian Fellowship on June 27, 2009.

You can download the presentation by clicking here.

The emergence of the Internet is one of the most amazing things that happened in the twentieth century. It revolutionized the way we handle and access information.

Simply put, the Internet is a network of networks, a massive interconnection of computers all over the world. It is different from the World Wide Web, which is a wide collection of interconnected documents, hypertext and hyperlinks. The Web is but one of the communication services being provided in the Internet.

Features of the Internet

Email
World Wide Web
Remote Access
Online collaboration
File sharing
Streaming media
Voice over Internet Protocol

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Amazingly, there’s Wi-Fi access here at the Carwash service I chose along Quirino Avenue near San Jose del Monte Bulacan. The van needs cleaning! Ugh. Quite a number of bugs courageously beat against my windshield last night as we traversed the SCTEX from Victoria, Tarlac.

Technically, it was morning already when we passed through SCTEX. Together with Earlie and Aaron (national leaders of the Methodist Youth), I went to Victoria to deliver a talk on youth leadership. I talked to about 30-40 youth on what it means to be a leader. To make my talk interesting, I didn’t simply present principles of leadership. Instead, I drew upon the story of John Wesley’s life from his childhood, his life as founder and member of the Holy Club at Oxford University to his career as an itinerant preacher and founder of a movement. Alongside John Wesley, I also presented the life of Nelson Mandela and how he became instrumental in ending apartheid in South Africa.

My talk was done at about 9:15 in the evening. But I shared coffee time with the national leaders who are also my friends. We ended up leaving Tarlac at 12 midnight. Whew. I was sleepy while driving. Thankfully, Aaron and Earlie kept me company. I arrived home (at Tala, Caloocan City) by 3:30 AM. Exhausted and wanting to simply get some rest.

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The people of Iran are going through their own version of people power. With the disputed presidential elections in Iran, young people and women support the opposition amid arrests of journalists and other social activists. According to NY Times, this is the most sustained challenge to the Iranian government since the Islamic Revolution in 1979.

There were, however, growing signs of divisions within the alliance united behind Mr. Ahmadinejad. Members of Parliament upset with the brutality of the government crackdown summoned the interior, justice and intelligence ministers to a hearing.

“I don’t think anyone really knows what comes next,” said an Iranian political analyst, who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of retribution by the government. “Most likely, we are going to enter a period of relative uncertainly, with ebbs and flows, until the Islamic Republic of Iran is altered or finds a new avenue for legitimacy.”

Interestingly, about 70% of Iran’s population are under the age of 30.

I have been reading the commentary about the news at NY Times, reading the take of some Iranian, American and Islamic scholars about the Iranian situation. According to Hamid Dabashi,

If you were to follow youth culture in Iran at the turn of the century — from the rise of a fascinating underground music (particularly rap) to a globally celebrated cinema, an astonishing panorama of contemporary art, video installations, photography, etc. — you would have noted the oscillation of this generation between apathy and anger, frustration and hope, disillusion and euphoria. In their minds and souls, as in their blogs and chat rooms, they were wired to the globalized world, and yet in their growing bodies and narrowing social restrictions trapped inside an Islamic version of Calvinist Geneva. Read the full story at NY Times.

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