Introducing the New Dean

Young Faith Matters Team do ‘Experience Christmas’

Our Young Faith Matters aim across this Advent period is to bring the joyful story of Christmas to children through two weeks of storytelling in churches across the Diocese. Schools and families love coming to churches during the Christmas period, and we want to make the most of this opportunity by offering fun, interactive stations that children can move around to experience the different aspects of Christmas. ‘Experience Christmas’ includes 6 stations that the children explore with 10 minutes per station, including the angel visiting Mary, the birth of Jesus promised, Mary and Joseph making their way to Bethlehem, and finishing with the gift of Jesus.

This is a great way to explain the real reason for Christmas to young children and open the discussion of who Jesus is, and why Christmas is so important to Christians. The Experience Christmas pack offers pictures and a script of how to run each station allowing for effective communication of the Good News of Jesus Christ.

Experience Christmas is building on the work that the YFM Team did through ‘Experience Easter’ earlier this year. Experience Easter was a chance for Ministry Areas to collaborate with schools and to begin to build strong partnerships. In just a month, the team connected with 661 children and developed 126 volunteers. During these sessions we had lots of positive feedback, including one child who said, ‘Experience Easter was great, lots of fun activities, and my favourite part was eating the bread’ (at the last supper station). empower churches and Ministry Areas to deliver Experience Christmas or Easter themselves. We are also excited to see these initiatives lead to positive connections between Ministry Areas and schools.

If you’d like to get involved in delivering your own Experience Christmas or want to know more, please get in touch with Simon Evans (simonevans@cinw.org.uk) the YFM Lead, who will be happy to discuss this with you (details on the Young Faith Matters webpage), or you can order your own Experience Christmas pack at jumpingfishpublications.co.uk. The education team have been working with schools across the diocese to develop children and young people’s understanding of why people seek sanctuary and how we can welcome them. This started with the Taith Adfent project focusing on theme of refuge and led to a group of our schools working towards the School of Sanctuary Recognition.

Written by Simon, Emilia, Sam, Steve and Phil (YFM)

Schools of Sanctuary

Head of Education for the Diocese of Llandaff, Beccie Morteo said, “The Schools of Sanctuary key aims combined with the Christian values of love and compassion makes this recognition a great opportunity for our schools to learn, share and celebrate together. Children and young people who understand and show empathy to their neighbours, as Jesus taught us, will build a bright future for us all.”

St Monica’s Church in Wales Primary School were one of the first Church in Wales Primary Schools to achieve the recognition. As a small, inner-city, Church in Wales primary school situated in the Cathays area of Cardiff, the school welcomes a steady stream of new arrivals throughout the year, including asylum seekers, refugees, children of students and children who have moved from other areas of Cardiff, the UK or from overseas.

Twenty-four different languages are spoken in the school. The school offers a warm welcome to all children and families but wanted to extend that further through the Schools of Sanctuary programme.

One of the first things they did was enable all staff, pupils, and parents to learn about the issues faced by refugees and asylum seekers. Older pupils then shared this knowledge throughout the school with their peers and with groups of parents. They were commended by the assessment panel for showing a high level of understanding and empathy for families in need of refuge.

The school demonstrates excellent examples of partnership working with the local community with initiatives such as ‘Helping Hands’ (a group of parents and volunteers that work together on projects within the schools) and by providing weekly meals (made by pupils) for low-income families at ‘The Table’ – a local community café.

The school also has strong links and works closely with the Roath and Cathays Ministry Area, the local mosque and Cardiff Muslim Primary School.

Headteacher of St Monica’s, Abi Beacon, said, “We are thrilled to be recognised as a School of Sanctuary. At St Monica’s we are committed to helping our children, staff and wider community understand what it means to be seeking sanctuary and extend a welcome to everyone as equal, valued members of the school community. We are proud to be a place of safety and inclusion for all.”

Beccie is keen for all Church in Wales schools to think about what their school could do to be a place of ‘sanctuary’ in their catchment area, however that may look. She said, “As a diocese we want to encourage and enable as many of our schools as possible to engage with the Schools of Sanctuary programme as not only does it support the core purposes of the Curriculum for Wales, but it allows church schools to focus on putting their Christian values into practice, offering welcome and support to all.”