St Cassian’s team get off to a great start

The 2023-2024 year at St Cassian’s has got off to a great start as we had the first group for the new volunteers which was Albert the Great Primary School. They had a wonderful time and the team training is bearing fruit already.

To officially open the new year, we had a beautiful commissioning Mass with members of the board and De La Salle Brothers in attendance along with family members on a live stream in different corners of the globe to celebrate the team’s start. Everyone received their Lasallian Star which was the official symbol as a thank you for stepping forward to take part in this wonderful mission. This was followed by a commissioning meal which went on into the evening.

The team carried on their training which was five weeks in total and this included various workshops, community living related talks, practising public speaking, fire marshal, mental health and first aid training certificates. We could see everyone growing in confidence in Youth Ministry through this and also bonding as a team.

We also said happy birthday to our volunteer member on team Marti with a delicious chocolate cake.

We hosted St. Augustine’s sixth form who attended on a couple of day retreats. This involved small group sessions, the low ropes and an Emmaus walk amongst other things. This was very successful and everyone enjoyed the programme. Following this we had St Joseph’s Reading College Sixth Form stay overnight for a few days and after this we had our first four-day retreat for the new term with St. Paul’s year 11 coming over to St. Cassian’s. We also had St. Amand’s Primary school come over for a couple of days on retreat.

The team would like to send out a huge thank you to all these schools, their students and staff for their participation in the retreats and for the joy and energy that they offered. They lit up the retreat centre.

We are at the start of the year and it has begun in brilliant fashion and we look forward to the coming weeks and months.