The Lasallian Youth Club A NEW ERA

It is hard to say when the Lasallian Youth Club started at De La Salle. Some say it was two decades ago. Others say more. What is agreed upon is that, until now, it has always been predominantly focused on service.

When De La Salle High School first opened on September 7, 1965, there were certainly early signs that community service would play a role in the lives of De La Salle students. Father LaSalle Hallissey, himself a member of De La Salle’s first graduating class in 1969, distinctly recalls how he and other students helped prepare unused classrooms at Most Precious Blood School while De La Salle was being constructed. Similarly, he remembers how this same group of students came together the following year to help move desks, supplies, and other equipment into the 100 and 200 wings.

“Service is part of our Lasallian culture and the service tradition was always there,” says Father LaSalle. “For instance, sometime in the first semester of my senior year, the Mt. Diablo School District came to De La Salle and asked Brother Norman to help them. They were not able to recruit enough of their own senior boys to be counselors for their sixth grade outdoor education camps. Brother Norman spoke to De La Salle seniors and several of us accepted the challenge and went twice to be counselors at the outdoor education camp in Pescadero, Calif.”

Since then, the phrase “Enter to Learn, Leave to Serve” has become an essential charism of a Lasallian school, even though the phrase itself was only adopted in 1998 after it was discovered hanging over the entrance of a remote Lasallian school in Kushpur, Pakistan. More importantly, it has been embraced as a core value at De La Salle and is embodied every year through the many charitable acts of our students (see previous page).

Now, under the guidance of Brother Iñigo Riola, the Lasallian Youth Club is embarking upon a new chapter – one that expands its mission to also include De La Salle’s other two core values (faith and community). The goal is to enrich and deepen the faith experiences of Lasallian Youth members, while also fostering a spirit of community and a desire to be of service to those in need. In this effort, Brother Riola sees himself as a guide, while the students themselves take ownership and lead. This enables students to develop skills and capacities in such a way that they drive their social, emotional, physical, mental, and intellectual growth.

Still in its infancy, the new directive for De La Salle’s Lasallian Youth Club is already starting to come to fruition. The club has already connected with other Lasallian Youth Clubs within the San Francisco New Orleans (SFNO) District as it seeks out community. It even partnered with one of them, Christian Brothers High School in Sacramento, on a project for De La Salle Academy. Together, members from the two clubs organized a one-day retreat for De La Salle Academy’s middle school students.

In addition, De La Salle’s Lasallian Youth Club recently did a book drive for St. Jaime Hilario School in the Philippines. Their goal was to collect as many nonfiction novels for their elementary and secondary students as possible as a way to help facilitate a love of reading. Through the generosity of the community, they were able to collect 147 books for St. Jaime Hilario. The club also partnered with Service Leadership to collect 506 diapers and 57 jackets and beanies for Bay Area Crisis Nursery and Contra Costa Foster Friends.

For now, the faith component is predominantly taking place at meetings. The club has gone back to basics in as much that it starts every meeting with a prayer service, followed by faith sharing based on a gospel reading. However, it is the hope of the group to broaden their work to include the promotion of faith among other students in the future.