Serve

This is an event that combines hands-on service particularly focused on the call to care for creation with reflection and catechesis on Catholic Social Justice Teaching.

Volunteer organizes donated baby products at parish relief center for those affected by a hurricane. (CNS photo/Gregory A. Shemitz)

Offering a day of service for young adults gives them the opportunity to live out Catholic Social Teaching in their community as a way of responding to the Gospel mandate to serve “the least of our brothers and sisters.”

Discover the joys of connecting with God’s creation and one another by starting a community garden. A community garden offers a glimpse into the ways many saints and wisdom figures connected with God, manifests Catholic Social Teaching’s tenet of Care for Creation, and might even lower your blood pressure and help you shed a few pounds! Enjoy the planting, growing, and harvesting as a young adult community. This is a great idea for urban and rural parishes, and we have ideas to make it happen on a small or large scale (from container garden to city block).

Gather with young adults to assemble relief kits for people affected by natural disasters around the world. This is a time to help others and also recall times when God has been a refuge for the storms in our own lives.

Description: This Advent program is a community-building social activity that allows young parishioners to share in the joy of Christmas by decorating their church as a community.

Description: This fun event gathers young adults to reflect on the Nativity story and invites them to collect baby items for a local pregnancy center or women’s shelter. 

A young volunteer with a Catholic-run charity helps fix up a home in a poor area of West Virginia. (CNS file photo/Paul Haring)

This service project experience for young adults is designed to be manageable for the busy young adult’s schedule and meant to engage them in service opportunities in their community.

Using Philippians 1 as a guide, young adults will embark on a three-part journey of practical Scripture study, discernment, service projects, and community gathering and discussion.

Photo courtesy of Fr. Michael Allelo.

This program is designed to expose young adults to a mission experience of volunteer service within their own parish, helping them to know God through the work of their hands.

St. Ann's 20 Somethings from Coppell, Texas, at Party with Purpose in 2011. Photo courtesy of Julia Rooney

This program organizes young adults to help families in need during the Christmas season and give them Christmas gifts. Pairing with a local charity organization, young adults are encouraged to meet the families in order to make their giving more personal.