FDYRUU Social Action
Social—1: Of or pertaining to society; 2: Pertaining to or occupied with welfare work
Action—1: The state or process of acting or doing: condition of being active

So, I find myself outside of a church 300 miles from my hometown, selling cookies and bread baked just yesterday by teens with a social conscience and more than enough conviction to use it. I’m here for a bake sale to raise money for a small tribe of people in Honduras, called the Mosquitia, whose land was ravaged by Hurricane Mitch. With me, in Tampa, are three other youth from the weekend’s Social Action Conference and a laundry basket full of baked goods and small bags of worry dolls. In Tampa, alone, we made almost 250 dollars (and there were five other small groups like ours at five other churches in the St. Pete area, all raising money for this cause). My name is Caspian Baskin and I’m the Social Action Co-chair from the Florida District Youth Council.

Every year, the Social Action Committee plans and puts on two Social Action Conferences for Florida District youth. This year, the first of these took place March 5-7. Teens arrived from all over Florida at the St. Pete Church on Friday night. We had our opening circle to tell everyone why they were there and what they would be doing. Then, we all went to sleep so we could be ready for the long day ahead.

In the morning, a group of teens made breakfast for everyone and then we met in our small groups and chose a workshop from a selection of yeast breads, sweets, worry dolls, speech writing, and visuals. The speech writing workshop taught one kid from each group what was going on in Honduras and what the money from the next day’s bake sale was going towards. (We had decided to send it to an organization called Development and Peace at McGill University because they seemed to be successful at working with grassroots organizations in Honduras to get the aid to the indigenous tribes.) Then, they each wrote a speech to present to their group and to the church that they would be going to. The visuals workshop made signs and price lists for each group. The sweets workshop made cookies and rice crispy treats and banana bread. The yeast breads workshop made a variety of loafed breads. Lastly, the teens in the worry dolls workshop made worry dolls and small bags for them to go in. Because it took so long to make worry dolls and breads, we were finishing off those things all through the day. In the middle of the day, we had a little free time to make lunch and eat and socialize a little. At the end of the day, there was a worship service led by the one-person youth group in St. Pete and their Youth Minister. The food and signs were all organized into baskets for each separate church. Then, there was a little more free time for everyone to relax and get ready for sleep so they could be refreshed and ready to sell their goods. Then they all went to sleep. I, myself, woke up a little earlier than anyone else so I could make sure everything was ready. Then everyone got up, got dressed up, and got into their groups where the group leaders explained in detail what was going to happen. Then all the groups left. I decided to go with the group going to Tampa because they were short one person. Scott Curfew drove us to the church in Tampa. We set up our table outside of the entrance door. When the service started, Scott, who had written the speech for the ten minutes we had been promised in the service went in and made his presentation. Once the service was over people began to buy up our stuff. After only half an hour, we had sold everything and made about $250.00. We packed up and left to go back to St. Pete for a celebration lunch and the closing at Eric Bolton’s house. We were the last group to return and people were already eating when we got there. So, we turned in our money and started eating. After everyone was finished, we had a closing circle. All in all, we had raised over $800. Not too shabby for one weekend’s worth of work.

The conference was great success and everyone felt like they had done something. In my eyes, I only hope that they learned that they can do things to help all the time and not just when it’s planned out for them. This was my last Social Action Conference as a leader. I’ve been the co-chair for two terms now. I hope that I’ve brought the standards up and interested enough people to keep this sort of thing going throughout Florida and YRUU.

— CASPIAN BASKIN