What You Need to Know – Youth Ministry

It Takes a Village … or a Barony

Greetings, Citadel!

“The Youth are our Future.” I hear that a lot around the Barony, the Kingdom, and the Society at large, so to me that means that it’s important, not only to me, but to a lot of you. In order to ensure our Youth are taken care of, we need to invest time and energy in doing the right thing. Corpora outlines what some refer to as the “Two-Deep Rule,” meaning that any time there is a Youth activity, we are required to have two background checked adults who are not related to or living under the same roof together. This is to protect our children as much as we can in accordance with sound practice, but also to help out as a team.

Background Checked

I would ask that anyone who brings children to SCA events, to help out with your own and group activities. That means we need to get background checks accomplished. It may sound daunting or even expensive, but the great news is that it is completely FREE.

The Outlands and the Society will take care of your background check and Their Majesties and the Kingdom Seneschal have made it clear that they will do whatever they can to support growth in Youth Activities. The first step is to get background checks done for more members of our populace.

All you need to do is submit the following information to our local Seneschals at Seneschal@SouthernPass.org to get the ball rolling:

SCA name:
mundane name:
group: 
mailing address: 
email: 
phone: 
member # and expiration date: 

This is the information that the Seneschals need to send to Kingdom

Back to That Whole Village Thing

Now that we’ve got the admin stuff out of the way, we need to dedicate ourselves to working together to bring about compliance with these requirements. The Two-Deep Rule is a minimum and a requirement, but we shouldn’t be scrounging for volunteers in a Society built upon Courtesy and Service. Even if you don’t have children yourself, you’re interacting with future Barons and Baronesses, Peers, possibly even future Crowns. I plan to be around this Dream as long as I can, so it’s not far fetched to think that some day one of our currently active youth could step up as Baron or Baroness here in our Barony. We want them to grow up with the right ideas about Honor and Chivalry, Courtesy and Virtue.

Having said that, I will be taking on Pages as Retinue in the various areas of the SCA including Martial, Service, and A&S. We have Youth Champions, but we can’t stop there. There are youth dying to get involved in combat and while we can’t fight or have them join us on the field, there’s nothing stopping us from teaching them the mechanics or having them Herald or act as runners. I have seen some excellent examples at Crown Tournament and other events.

It Begins and Ends with Attitude

If we see Youth as an opportunity, it will grow as an opportunity. If we see it as a hurdle, it will most definitely become a hurdle for us. Youth doesn’t have to be a separate thing, it can be integrated into a lot of our activities. The SCA is a family friendly organization and that should be a good thing, not any sort of burden. If we approach Youth is an attitude of how to make it work, then we can only see positive dividends.