GREAT NEWS! On the last week of every month we’ll be giving you a great resource idea you can use in your work with children, young people and families. This month the wonderful Dylan Barker from FYT suggests how we can encourage young people to reflect on the refugee crisis…
“If your home was on fire and you only had three minutes to grab whatever you needed, what would take? It’s a question posed by the website theburninghouse.com. The site is a collection of photos and descriptions of what people would try to save if their house was on fire. The reflections posted are a mixture of practicality such as passport’s and documents, and sentimentally, photos and gifts from loved ones. It’s good question to pose to young people to help them consider what is truly valuable to them, what can’t be replaced. I’ve often thought about it myself.
With the current refugee crisis this question was brought into sharp focus when I came across, a series of interviews with fleeing refugees who had opened their bags and shown what they took – you can read them here.
Why not show young people theburninghouse.com and get them to take a similar picture on their phones about what they would save? Ask them to share their thinking and reflections with the rest of the group. Maybe they could work together on an agreed list of 10 things they’d all save. Then show them the reality of the refugees in that desperate situation, identifying what matches with their own list and what doesn’t. Depending on your context it might be interesting to ask questions around how they might take their faith with them. Many times throughout the bible the people of God fled from their oppressors, the Israelites from Pharaoh, Jesus from Herod. What if your church was burning down, what would you take? What is valuable?”
(Dylan Barker works for Frontier Youth Trust, lives in Bristol and is currently completing his MA with CYM)
