ORDER OF PREACHERS
The Dominican Family
Trinidad & Tobago

INTERNATIONAL DOMINICAN YOUTH MOVEMENT
(IDY)

The IDYM is a movement of groups of young people who follow the teachings of Jesus Christ keeping in step with the spirit and charism of St. Dominic. As preachers, their main mission thrust is to youth and peers.

History

The history of the IDY began in 1993 when the Dominican Council of Youth in Ireland (DCY) convoked and international meeting of those whom they knew shared their vision. The following year the meeting brought participants from Ireland, England, Spain, Germany, France, Poland, USA, Portugal, Italy, Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Holland where youth associated with the Dominican Family already existed in national solitude.

In January 1995 fr. Timothy Radcliffe, master of the Order, invited a small group to Santa Sabina, Headquarters of the Order in Rome, to formulate plans to solidify the work already begun and spreading. That year 150 youth attended the now annual assembly; the following g year, with delegates from Africa, Asia, South America, the number had swollen to three hundred. With the presence of the Master at this meeting Dominican identity was assured; IDY members felt that they nwere accepted as members of the Dominican Family.

Official Approval

In 1998, at the General Chapter of the Order, the highest authority, held  in Bologna, Italy, the following declarations were made officially by the assembled friars:

1. We rejoice at the development of the International Dominican Youth Movement as a sign of the Spirit working in our times. This movement supports the renewal of the Order.

2. The IDYM is composed of groups of mainly young lay people who are committed to be disciples of Jesus Christ and they assume in their lives the basic Dominican values of prayer, study, community and preaching.

3. We acknowledge them to be members of the Dominican Family and we encourage all the branches to support this movement.

4. We exhort all our communities to develop and support this movement, especially our houses of formation and those dedicated to work with youth.

5. We encourage the members of the IDY to reach out to the other branches through participation in the diverse ministries of the Order. We exhort the members of the Dominican Family, especially the friars, to welcome the members of IDY as collaborators in their ministries.

6. In view of their commitment to the common mission of the Order, we encourage the members of the IDY to value formation as an integral element of their vocation.

During the first days of August of 1998, the V International Meeting took place in Maynooth with the theme: "Dream in the dark, live in the light". And certainly it was obvious, on the fifth anniversary of the meetings, that only a mere five years ago we had dreams, intuitions, desires, and now these were realised in the faces of real people, in the groups from America, Asia, Africa and Europe who live out their Christian discipleship in the Dominican way. Young people who five years after the Newbridge meeting in which they dared to dream, addressed the assembly telling of mission experiences in their own country or outside it; formation programmes carried out with men and women in formation in the Dominican Family, formation communities of youth of the Movement, work in the field of ecumenism or commitment to Justice and Peace; and dialogue with other religions.

The journey has been strewn with joys and difficulties, with expectations and disappointments, but certainly as we evaluated these few steps on the journey, we confirmed as valid the intuition of those who participated in that first Newbridge meeting: "Something new is being born".

Vision Statement

The International Dominican Youth have formulated the following Vision Statement:

We are a Dominican movement, made up of groups formed mostly of young lay people. We try to live our mission inside the Dominican Family.

In many nations and in every continent, the Dominican Youth Movement offers a different way to find and live the Gospel.

We are different in the way we belong to the movement, but we all value the Dominican Lifestyle. We try to keep Jesus Christ at the centre of our lives.

Prayer, study, community life and preaching are the pillars of our lives.

In response to the desire to bring the message of Jesus Christ to all the men and women of the world, we try to use all the means and opportunities to preach God's Word. Hospitality, mercy, friendship, the search for the truth through study and prayer, dialogue, service to others and our living together according to the values of the Gospel define our groups and are our method of preaching. We trust in the aid of the Holy Spirit and our faith compels us to create a world of justice, created out of faith hope and love.

We want to bring a fresh, vital and vigorous presence to the Order and to share in their history, tradition and legacy. With the spirit of St. Dominic, we look to the future full of hope and happiness as we try to discern the movement of the Holy Spirit in our own lives.