The Luss International Youth Project

The Luss International Youth Project was born in discussions around the celebration of our fifteen hundredth anniversary. What a special occasion – and how important that we should share it with other people! As we regarded what we had to share we realised that our greatest asset was our glebe, such beautiful land sitting right on the banks of Loch Lomond. We developed plans for the glebe (involving building pathways and creating a Pilgrimage Trail) and then realised that the best way of making these happen wasn’t to seek funding and do it ourselves but rather to make the creation of the Pilgrimage Pathway a project in itself involving young people from home and  abroad so that the finished project would not just consist of a pathway but of a community of young people from all around the world.

In 2006 as a pilot project we brought two parties of young people to Scotland. Each party consisted of three groups of ten, each group bringing with them two leaders; the intention was for each party to include one group of ten Scots with two other groups from different parts of Europe. The first party brought youngsters from Finland and the Czech Republic; the second again from the Czech Republic and a huge, eighteen strong party from Italy. Our Scottish youngsters came from the local area, particularly from the neighbouring town of Helensburgh; each group spent three weeks with us. During the first two weeks we built the pathway on the glebe and got to know each other with parties and planned events each evening. On the third week we went on tour, staying at Youth Hostels, and moving across the country from Oban in the west to Edinburgh in the east. It was successful beyond our wildest dreams! In 2007, which was even more successful, we brought youngsters together from Finland, Denmark, Portugal, America, Italy and Scotland. Youngsters came from inner city Glasgow to enjoy our facilities and developed an exchange with a National Park in Italy which allowed youngsters to explore the similarities and differences between living in a National Park in Italy and in Scotland. Each year since then the project has continued to grow and develop with the list of countries from which youngsters have come getting longer each year.

We received so much help. In 2006, the actual costs to us of the visits came to close on £20,000 of which the Scottish Executive paid half. In addition the Barr Foundation and the Morgan Foundation each gave us £5,000. But such had been the rush to get everything set up – the bridge to be built, accommodation units to be constructed, young folk to be identified, and the week-long journey throughout Scotland to be arranged – that we just didn’t get round to building a kitchen and making proper arrangements to feed all these hungry youngsters. Into the breach stepped the Lodge on Loch Lomond, a prestigious hotel on the banks of the Loch just a few minutes walk from us. We met with the owners, Ann and Niall Colquhoun and with their manager John Hughes, and the upshot was that once the Manse dining room had been converted into a dining room for larger numbers than ever before (with seats given to us by the hotel) the Lodge provided all the young folks’ meals, every day, morning and night, for the whole six weeks. It is the kindness of which dreams are made and it contributed hugely towards the colossal success of the first year of our International Youth Project. The next year year the same hotel helped us to build a commercial kitchen within the Manse enabling us to provide first class meals for all our visitors and creating a facility which enables us to offer accommodation and meals for parties of young and old whenever the opportunity arises.

Recently we have brought together youngsters from Finland and Poland, hosted a visit from a South Korean Church in New Jersey, and in July of 2008 we hosted a multi-national exchange programme including young folk from Finland, Poland, the Czech Republic and Scotland, followed a few weeks later by a visit involving young folk from Italy and Scotland. Three of our more recent visits have been funded through the British Council (Connect Youth and Youth in Action) but we also try to fund at least one exchange trip a year using our own resources.

Two years ago saw us developing relationships with the Princes Trust, which has enabled young people taking part in their programmes to come and spend time with us in Luss; with local secondary schools who have discovered that our centre makes a fine base for leadership training; with adult and youth groups throughout Scotland who spend anything from a day to a few days enjoying using the facilities which we have developed; and with congregations who have heard of what we do and have come to spend a few days with us discovering what we are all about and sharing their expertise and enthusiasm with us.

In 2008 Scottish and Southern Energy awarded us a bursary to enable a young person from overseas who had previously been part of our programme to return, share in being part of our leadership team for the summer, and see Scotland at the same time. The first recipient of this award was a young Finnish girl who was part of the very first overseas exchange visit in 2006.

No one has contributed more to our project than the Princes Trust. We work closely with teams from four local colleges: Dumbarton, Clydebank, Greenock and Kilmarnock. There is rarely a month goes by in which we are not joined by at least one Princes Trust team – taking part in a community challenge, sharing in community service, enjoying a work-experience placement. The Princes Trust have built a new cinema for our visitors this year; they have restored our accommodation block; built pathways on the glebe and created several areas of board-walk – and once they have completed their task they have kept in touch with us. This has become an important place for them as well.

Already, at the start of 2010, we have created a community of young people from all around the world united by their experiences on the Pilgrimage Pathway on the banks of Loch Lomond. Part of our celebrations for this special year is to bring everyone back to meet together where it all began.

The Luss Glebe Cross – marking the completion
of the first phase of the Glebe Project