By Fr. Randy A. Figuracion, SDB

Talisay City, Cebu, Philippines - In his January visit to the Philippines, Pope Francis gave this challenge: “We need to protect, guide and encourage our young people, helping them to build a society worthy of their great spiritual and cultural heritage.” The only way to implement this is through catechesis. We need to educate better the children and youth to the faith.

As a response to the Pope’s challenge, the Don Bosco Center for Lay Adult and Youth (DB-CLAY) organized a 3-day live-out Summer Workshop entitled: K-12 Catechesis for Children and Youth. It was able to gather 51 catechists from the different schools and parishes of Cebu and other islands.

The first day was facilitated by Fr. Joriz F. Calsa, SDB the newly appointed chairperson of the Commission on Youth Ministry (CYM) of the Philippine South Province. He presented to the participants the youth situation in Philippine context based on the recently published research “The National Filipino Catholic Youth Study 2014” commissioned by the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP), Episcopal Commission on Youth (ECY) and the Catholic Educational Association of the Philippines (CEAP) in collaboration with 18 universities and colleges nationwide.

Fr. Mario Baclig, SDB, an expert in Youth Ministry and catechesis was the resource person for the next two days. He gave a new, modern, comprehensive, systematic, developmental, inculturated, integrated and complete program of K-12 catechesis for our children and youth. Most of all, the matrix is so simple! It is, thus, a precious tool for our Filipino catechists today. Moreover, the workshop also focused on training and imparting skills for the participants that can make them better facilitators of knowledge and values to children and youth.