Elizabeth Wirsching

I have been working in the Youth Section for almost nine years. I get more and more touched by this simple fact: How incredibly important it is that we can create meetingplaces for young people with initiative. I see again and again, in many places on this globe, what exciting impulses arise from these meetings. I think what happens is the following:

As modern human beings we do not always find the place to unfold and develop our personality or realise our initiatives. We may even not always know what they are. In meeting with "soul friends" it is like a veil is taken away and new will forces are born. To come to this point we need each other: How can we support each other and at the same time strengthen our own individual path?

Caitlin Balmer

I first came to Dornach in September of 2004, never having heard of the Goetheanum, let alone the YouthSection. Well, I must have known about it, because I went to a Waldorf school in Upstate New York, but it was definitely not on my list of places to go. I was happily surprised to learn that I was not the only person on the planet with an abiding wish to change things for the better. And now, here I am.

February is my sixth month working and studying in the YouthSection. My project is the Connect Conference (April 19-23): and what a project that is! Our theme is one that is dear to my heart: we are all part of the same picture, and it’s our responsibility, each one of us, to make that picture what we want it to be.

Along with Connect, I am an individual student in the YouthSection. My theme is city planning, and here is an excerpt from something I wrote about that. It gives a good picture of my studies and me!

“…every person on the planet has a right to many things, from clean water and a good sewage system to beautiful architecture that encourages liveliness and creativity, to the possibility of being part of shaping the place where they live, physically and otherwise. I guess I take liberties with the 'basic' human rights - I don’t think they are as 'basic' as many people say: let’s strive for the ideals - otherwise we will never reach them.”

Hmm … and I also love spending time cooking in the kitchen with Katha, and wandering around on the hill when I need some fresh air. And that’s the very short version of me!

Guy Collins

Hi! What a year it has been so far; calendar year that is. In January, there I was wearing nothing more than a pair of board shorts on a longboard in the Indian Ocean breathing out after an intense week of Kgotla conferencing in Durban...as I write this I’m freezing to the bone in Järna, Sweden after an intense week of Orland Bishop, Yippies and 360˚ conference planning. Tomorrow I head back to chilly Dornach.

For those of you new to the present version of the YS team, I’m Guy, the crazy South African you may meet on the stairs in the YS house, anywhere on the hill or in the Big G depending on the time of day. I take care of taking care of the YouthSection’s interests, whatever they may be at any given moment.

I have an interest in modern initiation, free of tradition. How do I find an individual path towards my Self? To this end I am studying as an individual student in the YS looking into the relationship between initiation process and everyday life as it exists in the present. I use as my basis my own experiences, observations and process as well as the written texts of Rudolf Steiner concerning initiation. I have challenged myself to clothe my findings artistically in a way that freely shows what I am working with as opposed to “telling” it as knowledge - so, entering into an artistic Goethean process.

I am very inspired by people who explore life in a completely individual way. Some of those I admire for this are D.N. Dunlop, Bob Dylan, Maria Röschl...and many more including a certain Herr Dr. whose name is mentioned far too often without cause...

I am personally listening to www.myspace.com/thederektrucksband right now.

Remember to make a fool of yourself at least once a day, especially to save someone else from feeling foolish.

Silvia Zuur

How do I stay open to this world, say yes to this world, learn and be a student in this world and in turn teach in this world? How do I find my place here, in a society with endless opportunities, where I am taught to be what ever I want to be? But what do I want to 'be'? The only thing I know is that I want to be me.

I am Silvia Zuur from New Zealand (and proud of it, even though I know I say 'fish and chips' in a unique kind of way), but does that define me? I can tell you I have studied environmental studies and psychology at university, but does that make me different, is that who I am?

Do I begin to tell you about my work, my travels, where I have volunteered? That would put me in a box and I am not one to sit in boxes (though cardboard ones are always good fun). I would like to tell you that I hate wearing socks to bed, that I do like the unsalted Swiss butter, that I am an organised individual and having no plans for next week, month or year is a challenge, but I currently love it and live it.

I will admit I adore The Little Mermaid, that I admire and respect people who are honest. I can tell you that I am trying to turn my criticisms and judgments into reverence, and that I am asking the questions, 'How do we truly listen and not just wait to speak?' and 'What does it mean to help? Who needs help?' Finally I can tell you that I am incredibly competitive when it comes to playing cards (I am sorry, you have been warned)…

Katie Dobb

I came to the Goetheanum last July from my home town of Perth, Western Australia. The last few months have been an exploration into my relationship with anthroposophy. I have come to a place in my own life where I am interested in how we can live and experience anthroposophy so that anthroposophy becomes a living experience.

I am also constantly asking myself how we can make anthroposophy relevant to the world that we live in - how can anthroposophy meet the needs of society in the 21st century?

I have always been interested in people, human relationships and how we can learn and grow through our social interactions. What I am most passionate about is the theme of social warmth - looking at how we can create social warmth between people, groups, organisations and beyond. These interests and passions have led me to doing an individual study project through the YouthSection called "Sculpting with Warmth: A Journey from I to Community."

At the beginning of this year I started working at the YouthSection. I share the task of communications (eNews, website and communicating in other creative ways), so I am living with the question of how I can sculpt with warmth across the globe so that people connected to the YouthSection feel held and supported by the work we are doing here. If you have any thoughts or ideas please share them with me. Or if there is any way we can support you through our communication work then let me know.

Galyna Naumenko

My name is Galyna and I am from Ukraine, Kiev. I’m here studying the foundation year.

For me the most interesting and important question is how to combine your knowledge about anthroposophy with daily life. But what I’ve realised here is that you can’t provide anything without really deep work, trust, love and wisdom...

 

Katharina Ludwig

At the moment all I can think about is the Connect Conference. But it is difficult at this point in the preparation process to write an article about Connect and my viewpoint on it. I see so much. Actually, I should be seeing it all. But often parts of Connect only appear when I move into a context in my mind, and disappear again behind the horizon when I move into a different direction: The accommodation context, to name one practical one, or the context of responsibility (which everyone coming to Connect is a part of - the vision of Connect is that everyone at the conference is a part of shaping Connect!).

I could look at an aspect of this challenge of responsibility that we are taking the risk of going into, but already here so many new roads to write down open up that I have to chose again. Do I want to go strolling down the easier and fun way of what it feels like to take on a task and see the result of it, the pleasure of realising how good it feels to carry responsibility and change the world by everything we do?

Or do I want to look at how heavy it can be to realise that there are so many things to do in this world? How hard it can be to overcome the obstacles to being part of something successful like Connect will be? These 12th graders at the Connect Conference are presently overcoming their hesitancy to engage in something they don’t know yet and present their projects that they have been working with for so long in an entirely new surrounding amongst people they are still getting to know. There is an open field we could stride across together, filling it with self-created parts of the Connect Conference and on which we can look back and realise that we made this, all together!

I could also race down the curvy lane of what I am feeling about my own responsibility in Connect. Essentially I am still a 12th grader preparing to present my yearly project, trying my best to keep things together, going into the unknown because I need to, taking on tasks that feel a lot too big for me (in my comfort zone) only hoping that I will cope, finding out bit by bit that I do cope.

Every time I look at the faces of my Connect helpers from class 12 nearby, every time I get an email from somewhere in this world with a request about Connect, I realise that Connect is needed in this world! It is wished for by many people and carried by many who are presently preparing for their time in Dornach. Connect is not just a conference, it is a process that starts way before and carries on afterwards and it is an opportunity for everyone who hears about it or is lucky enough to go there to grow, to take on a task in this world and contribute to our society in a positive way. That is what I wish for. That everyone who gets in touch with Connect can take something with them into their lives back home and carry on the spirit they experienced at Connect in Dornach in their own way.

For more on Connect, visit www.connectconference.org

Chiara Bano

My name is Chiara and I come from an Italian region called Friuli-Venezia-Giulia. I studied aesthetics, massage and natural therapies. For all my life I've done many sports. I began when I was six-years old with roller-skating!

Now I am here in Dornach since 2006 studying eurythmy and I am really happy because it is the art that gives me the possibility to understand "what we are." I am very interested in artistic eurythmy.

At the moment, growing in creativity through the inspiration of anthroposophical research is my primary focus. I am grateful that we have the YouthSection for our meetings, for our studies and for our parties! It is a great place with nice, good people.

Che Wagner

I am currently working on the Connect Conference 2009, while also studying history and society studies in Basel. The YouthSection is all about connecting people to each other, no matter what they've done before, or where they come from. It's about taking every human being as equal.

For example, I connect students from the 12th grade class from the Waldorf School Birseck (around the corner from Dornach) to people from all sorts of companies, stores or farmers to let them fundraise either money or food to make their conference possible. So, this Connect there also will be an actual and direct connection between a 12th grade participant and a wheat farmer from the area. This is part of the work I am doing here: Make the participants aware and in this sense thankful for what they get.

We all need a free space and time to be able to first create these visions, make these efforts and also to have a constant discussion about it with other people: the YouthSection!

Pablo Grassi

I hear footsteps, we all do. They are those footsteps that humanity walked the last century, which have left wounds in the soft flowery field we call Earth. That they are possible objects of criticism is no question, neither that they might have been walked in the wrong direction. Problems were asking for solutions, and in this way anger changed into thirst in me already a couple of years ago. However, as I started to seek for deeper answers I noticed quickly not only the difficulty of archiving them, but also the lack of consciousness in my own actions.

Finding a new direction for the necessary next global footsteps seemed no easy task. Something, I still didn’t have, was asked for, and this was clarity in my own way I began to walk. That free men are the foundation stone for a free ideal society was my thesis and I knew my own self was the only experiment I could have.

This idea is the one I have been carrying the last months and the one I am trying to recognise. Inner development becomes the key to the world I am trying to find, and maybe because it is so difficult I know it is right. Being a person grounded on myself is the first step on my way, and might be the most important one because it certifies the rightness of all following ones.

Because in the YouthSection I found people with the same kind of thirst I had, it was almost necessary the exchange of that which lies in our own selves. I am a human trying to become human.

John Stubley

For some time I’ve been interested in the renewal of language – a kind of rescuing of words that have become trapped in the coffins we’ve made for them – a resuscitation of language so that it can, with beating heart, pulse its way back into life again.

Lately, I’ve also become interested in how a renewal of language can relate to the forming of new communities – to the capacity for a whole group of people to part the clouds that hover above them in order to spy the light of the star that can help them on their way.

I also see this as being central to the work we’re doing here at the YouthSection in Dornach. There is a star that shines above those of us who live and work here, and there is also a star that burns bright above the YouthSection around the whole world.

I am interested in the connections between these stars – between the initiatives we create here, and the initiatives of the YouthSection everywhere. I feel these stars are involved with a dance as intimate as the spinning of the earth with the sun.

And I believe more and more people around the world are asking similar questions – namely, How can I share with others a common vision of the project we’re involved with, while at the same time supporting all other individuals and initiatives?

How can we tend the substance that lives between all of us, no matter where we live, so that ‘the new’ can come into being?

This is a dialogue with one another, and with the stars, that I look forward to continuing in the future.