Additional Resources
Changing the Way We Care and Build-A-Bear are joining forces to keep children in loving homes. To raise awareness, Build-A-Bear designed a special bear called the Hugs N' Hope bear. You can help by hosting a Build-A-Bear party and build the Hugs N' Hope bear, which can be donated to a vulnerable child or kept as a reminder of your action. Five dollars from each bear built at the Hugs N' Hope parties will be donated to Changing the Way We Care. Sign up to host a party and follow these instructions: From the Build-A-Party main page > Let Us Help You (purple bar) > Build-A-Party > Book Your Party. At the end of the checkout process under “Party Details,” you will see various options of bears to choose from. Please check “Hugs ‘N Hope Bear” and continue to checkout.
A national collaborative effort has begin between the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), the National Federation for Catholic Youth Ministry (NFCYM), the USCCB National Advisory Team on Young Adult Ministry, and the National Catholic Network de Pastoral Juvenil Hispana (LaRed) to engage the church in a National Dialogue on Catholic Pastoral Ministry with Youth and Young Adults with the intent to renew our ministry efforts with these members of our faith community. The vision of this initiative is an energized and unified Church committed to forming and engaging youth and young adults as missionary disciples.
"The young person of today is met with a host of external and internal challenges and opportunities, many of which are specific to their individual contexts and some of which are shared across continents. In light of this, it is necessary for the Church to examine the way in which it thinks about and engages with young people in order to be an effective, relevant and life-giving guide throughout their lives."
Now more than ever, Catholic school thought leaders recognize the need to address the challenges facing Catholic schools. One of the biggest challenges is declining enrollment. In the United States Catholic Elementary and Secondary Schoosl 2017-2018: The Annual Statistical Report on Schools, Enrollment and Staffing, McDonald and Schultz reported that “Overall, the national enrollment decline since 2008 has been greater than 435,000, a 19.2% loss of the student population” and the decrease in number of schools is 1,026 or 14%.”