Youth ministry as an agency of youth development for the vulnerable youth of the Cape Flats

Garth Aziz

doi:10.4102/ve.v38i1.1745

Abstract

Religiosity has a profound role and influence on youth development within a community. Religiosity promotes risk reduction and positive moral characteristics and thus remains an avenue of opportunity for transformation in considering the lived experiences of vulnerable young people living on the Cape Flats in the Western Cape, South Africa. The Cape Flats is an area that is overwhelmed with unemployment, poverty, gang violence, chemical substance abuse and a general societal abandonment of young people. It is out of dire hopelessness that a meaningful relationship with God can be experienced by youth. The Cape Flats is, therefore, a fertile space for an intervention of religiosity. This article will research how the agency of youth ministry as a positive youth development can assist in youth development within a community in tension like that of the Cape Flats. While youth development is a broad category for consideration and research, this article will primarily focus on identity formation of young people, in particular, the vulnerable youth living on the Cape Flats.Intradisciplinary and/or interdisciplinary implications: The agency of youth ministry, in an evangelical epistemology, should seek to address the influencers on adolescent identity formation, as one’s identity has a direct bearing on faith formation. The potential outcome of the article would allow the youth ministry to take serious the impact of the lived realities of youth and adjust their programmatic designs and outcomes, in relation to youth faith formation.

Highlights

The coloured1 adolescent2 living on the Cape Flats, a concept and place introduced and enforced by the apartheid government of South Africa, is adversely affected by many negative influences
The young person on the Cape Flats is regarded as vulnerable as these negative experiences, which have become a part of the daily lives of young people living on the Cape Flats, could have wide-ranging effects on the development of the young person
The article argues that Christian religiosity – faith formation – coordinated and facilitated through the agency of the youth ministry as a resource for positive youth development (PYD), can have a positive influence on the identity formation of the young person living in communities in tension

Summary

Introduction

The coloured1 adolescent2 living on the Cape Flats, a concept and place introduced and enforced by the apartheid government of South Africa, is adversely affected by many negative influences. The article argues that Christian religiosity – faith formation – coordinated and facilitated through the agency of the youth ministry as a resource for positive youth development (PYD), can have a positive influence on the identity formation of the young person living in communities in tension.

Results

Conclusion