Greetings Conference Members,

In years past the conference has had a lively and vibrant youth program with many different opportunities and programs for youth and young adults to engage with each other and the conference, providing service and developing their faith through community together. These programs were critical to my own faith formation and sense of a larger community of faith beyond just our local walls.

Many of these programs have fallen by the wayside due to budget constraints and lack of staff to support these efforts, but the core of these, youth summer camp, has remained. Unfortunately that activity has challenges of its own. Camp the last couple of years has been running a deficit and it is becoming an unsustainable model. The desire is of course to keep this program running and perhaps revitalize some of the past youth ministry opportunities, however to do this the conference needs your help. In the past a committee existed to help manage these events, and take some of the burden off of the already busy conference staff, but that committee has not been active in recent years. The conference is reforming this committee to help investigate sustainable models for continuing camp as well as address other opportunities for youth activities in the future.

If you have interest in participating in this board please contact Barbara Doerrer-Peacock at bdoerrerpeacock@cox.net. Remember the intent here is not cutting youth, it is, in fact, building them up, getting them involved and responsibly managing our conference finances in the process for doing so.

Sincerely,
Jeremy Bailey
Executive Board Member of the Southwest Conference and Representative to the MCVC for Scottsdale Congregational UCC