In next week’s News & Review you will find something different — a new religious section. Not only will the Sacramento News & Review be printing pages that display many faith-based youth activities available in the greater Sacramento area, but the paper will also include several pages of advertising from local faith organizations such as Northern California Conference, Davis Community Church, Christ Unity Church, Trinity Episcopal Cathedral, Genesis Church, St. John’s Lutheran Church, Spiritual Life Center, Bread of Life/Spirit in the Arts and First Church of the Nazarene. All of these organizations are interested in reaching Sacramento News & Review readers. The youth activities are being pulled from the special Sacramento News & Review website, SacYouth.com.
The SacYouth.com project was made possible by a grant from the Sierra Health Foundation and the cooperation and interest from a diverse collection of faith-based organizations in the area. This is a valuable program that shares activity information with the community to show them what their children are welcome to participate in. In addition, Dorothy Meehan from Sierra Health Foundation connected the Sacramento News & Review to Area Congregations Together (ACT), in order to work with Sacramento’s faith based organizations to offer leadership training to their youth leaders.
While the partnership between the Sacramento News & Review, a very diverse and liberal weekly newspaper, and religious organizations is unlikely, it stems from one common theme, “unity.” The concept started with an interfaith night of music on the first anniversary of September 11th in hopes of bringing the community together in a time of despair. This event came to be because of the successful efforts of the Sacramento News & Review’s president and CEO, Jeff vonKaenel.
In working to make this event a success, vonKaenel attended hundreds of services amongst 60 local churches and organizations all over Sacramento to find faith-based music for the event. In making these connections, he noticed that there were untapped resources for youth related programs within this religious community and decided to link up Sacramento’s 400,000 young people with the great youth programs being sponsored by these local organizations.
For more information regarding this project, contact the Sacramento News & Review at (916) 498-1234 or visit www.sacyouth.com.
