This year’s YouLead participants smile for a photo outside Santuario Nacional de Nuestra Señora de la Caridad on Sunday after Mass. COURTESY OF JUDITH MONTALVAN
Youth build friendships and remember ‘who they are’ at Hispanic ministry program
BY JUANA MATIAS, SPECIAL TO THE WESTERN KENTUCKY CATHOLIC
Hi, my name is Juana Matias. I am from Webster County. I attend St. Michael’s Catholic Church in Sebree, Ky. I will be talking about my experience at SEPI.
What is SEPI? SEPI is a South East Pastoral Institute for Hispanic ministry located in Miami, Fla. I attend a program that SEPI held for a week which is called YouLead. YouLead is an acronym for Young Latino Summer Leadership Institute.
YouLead is a program for first, second, and third-generation young Latinos in the Southeast area. It is a bilingual program with 2 levels held in the summer for a week. It helps prepare young Hispanic leaders who can impact their communities and churches. YouLead is held annually in a different location most of the time. This year in June for one week I could attend YouLead which was held in Miami at SEPI.
On Friday the program started around 6 p.m. and we had to sign in and they provided everyone with a bag and a few items. Before we started the classes on Monday they set up activities where we were to bond with each other and get to know everyone. We had missions to do for one day where we went out and helped others in the community. We attended Mass there every day but on Sunday we attended Mass at Santuario Nacional de Nuestra Señora de la Caridad and it was beautiful.
Juana Matias, a member of the red team for a scavenger hunt during YouLead, and her group pose in front of a whiteboard during activities. Also pictured are friends Karen, Melanie, Jesus, Carolina, Clarissa and Gabriel. Every team had to come up with a game to play and this was one of the games their team came up with. COURTESY OF SISTER JEANETTE GAMBOA
We had classes from Monday through Thursday that started at 8 a.m. and ended at 4 p.m. The teachers who led the classes were great and they were all Latinos/Latinas. I was able to learn many new things and have a better understanding of my faith. I received information that helped me answer doubts that I had and was able to grow my relationship with God. I received information that I did not know about Catholicism and it helped me have a better understanding of my Catholic faith. I met so many new people who were young Latinos/Latinas in a way that we were the same in different ways. The people that I met were very nice and helpful and I was able to form friendships.
We all had the same goal of what we wanted from the program and it was to learn and receive information to be able to take back to our community. Something that stays with me from YouLead is not to forget where you come from and to embrace your culture. I will be teaching this to our youth group because many of them are Latinos/Latinas and many forget who they are. I will also be talking about our Catholic faith to give them a better understanding.
For more information about Hispanic youth formation programs such as SEPI’s YouLead, contact Susana Solorza at [email protected] or (270) 683-1545.
On the last day of YouLead, young people smile for a picture with their YouLead certificates. COURTESY OF JUDITH MONTALVAN
Originally printed in the September 2024 issue of The Western Kentucky Catholic.
