As per last year, this year's SPUC interns went to a youth festival in Walsignham to promote the pro-life message and get people active about campaigning on behalf of vulnerable people in the womb. Below is a short account from one of our interns, about his few days in walsingham:
As an intern I had the privilege of helping to run the stall along with SPUC Scotland at the Youth 2000 festival in Walsingham over the bank holiday weekend, promoting the value of life to hundreds of young people and families.We've been busy over the summer at events such as the conference on disability and sport held in London, the Faith Summer Session, and Evangelium, as well as Walsingham. We've met hundreds of new people and given out 500 pro-life packs, so far. Now we're focused on cultivating the seeds sown and making sure the new academic year proves fruitful for unborn children, because we'll have even more dedicated young adults working on their behalf at universities and towns up and down the UK.
We sold pro life merchandise as handing out free information packs that contained, key information about abortion, abortifacient contraceptives, SPUC’s campaign for marriage, as well as the Pro Life Times newspaper.
We also displayed a foetal model set showing development of the unborn child, which proved to be a useful visual aid especially for families with younger children.
We received lots of encouragement: from students interested in starting pro-life societies on their university campus, to teachers keen to get the pro life message into classrooms. One particular lady shared her concern about abortion, especially in her home country where abortion is at risk of being legalised. She was interested to know the situation in the UK and when I told her the abortion statistics in UK she was very shocked and upset. Another lady spoke of her experience overcoming an abortion she had earlier in her life, but now feels healed and says how a picture of an unborn child on a pro life leaflet helped her come to terms with it.
Lots of other people, who passed us were fascinated to see the size and development of the child in utero at 20 weeks. It was very encouraging to meet and discuss these issues with such a range of people and to see so many young people excited and passionate about life.