ICYM News

Day – 4: Chaplains’ Animators’ Training Program 2014 at Bangalore

4th June 2014 : Fourth day of C.A.T began with Holy Mass celebrated by Rev. Fr. James DYD of Belgaum Diocese. In his homily he preached a homily on ‘Sanctification’. At 9am DYD of Archdiocese of Bangalore Fr. Divya Paul took the session on ‘Youth Psychology’. He said that teenagers are individuals with unique personalities and special interests, likes and dislikes. In general, however, there is series of developmental tasks that all face the adolescent year. Teen development can be divided in to three stages: early, middle and late adolescence. He described in this session the normal feelings and behaviours of adolescents. He spoke with statistics about the reality of young people today. He said that we should invest in the youth; Animators have a great role to accompany the youth.

At 11am Fr. Divya Paul spoke on ‘Youth Counseling’. He enumerated the stages in the counselling process. He said that some time counselling is a prolonged affair and sometimes people can be helped in a relatively short space of time. When a counselling relationship develops, it is not uncommon to see certain stages being worked through. These may be identified as follows; Getting started, Introductory talk, Identifying the issues, Coping with feelings, Identifying possible solutions, Agreeing a plan, Implementing the plan, and termination. He explained each stage with an example.

After the lunch at 3pm YCS/YSM National Chaplain Fr. Charles Menezes took a session on ‘How to start youth groups, activities in the movement’. He said that YCS/YSM is a cell based movement. At 5pm he took a session on “How to conduct cell meeting, Review of life as well as role of animators. He gave practical reality of the people.

At 8:30am Taize prayer and sacrament of reconciliation was organised for the participants. Then group went for preparing their duties for next day.