|PIC1|Young people around the world are praying for global citizenship for all during the YMCA/YWCA Week of Prayer and Fellowship.

Celebrations were held on Sunday to mark the start of the Week of Prayer, held annually for more than a hundred years by the World Alliance of YMCAs and the World Alliance of YWCAs.

Themes for this year’s week of prayer focus on the challenges facing today’s globalised world, like migration, poverty and climate change.

Members of the YMCA and YWCA will come together for a worship service at the Ecumenical Centre at the World Council of Churches headquarters in Geneva.

Secretary General of the World Alliance of YMCAs, Dr Bart Saha, said in a video message for the Week of Prayer that the YMCA had to find “newer and fresher ways” to engage in the needs of the community.

“We need to decide on how we are going to live in this one world as global citizens,” he said.

“May our prayers this week give us strength and new inspiration as we engage further in the mission of the YMCA.”

Jacob Maforo, from the YMCA Zimbabwe, said this year’s themes were relevant to the people of Zimbabwe “whose people are struggling with issues of national healing”.

YMCA Zimbabwe is using the Week of Prayer to initiate dialogue on the themes with church leaders, politicians, traditional leaders and civic leaders. On YMCA Peace Day on 14 November, young people will then march through the streets of the capital Harare.

“Many Zimbabweans have migrated, or rather fled the country. Of these the majority are living as illegal immigrants,” said Maforo. “Each day they wake up to the possibility of deportation back to Zimbabwe.”

The Week of Prayer follows a recent workshop on global citizenship in Coventry, in which delegates spoke of the challenge to see the world from a more holistic perspective.

“It is not my community first and your community next but we are all living in one world and one community,” said Dr Saha.

The theme of this year’s YMCA/YWCA Week of Prayer and Fellowship, ‘Striving for global citizenship for all’, will be the theme of the YMCA’s next world council to be held next July in Hong Kong.