YIP 2008 to present

by Lauryn Witco (Morley)

After two years of dry college lectures and empty written assignments, I realized I was tasting an education that wasn’t nourishing me. The world is full of confrontation, challenges, and suffering. I was asking questions and looking for my place to make a difference. The International Youth Initiative Program (YIP) was my answer.

The underlying philosophy, anthroposophy, that floated YIP was new to me. I was stunned by the architecture, food, and nature-based environment in which the program operated. The other participants, though strangers at first, were recognizable. They were fellow seekers, questioners, and doers. The time of swallowing questions rather than seeking their answers was over for me.

There is a kind of inner conflict that occurs during opportunities of growth—when you get to choose if you will continue as things have always been, or make a change. Sometimes life will shake you to make those changes and sometimes the initiation for change needs to be sought out. I sought this change for years before discovering YIP. I felt strongly that I had untapped capacities and unshaped ideas that could be a benefit to my community, perhaps one day even to the world.

The forty youths in the program lived together, with guiding lights from the courageous organizers and international teachers. Together we tackled difficult subjects for up to two weeks while getting a taste of world initiatives and the people addressing questions similar to ours. We were forced to confront our own thinking and beliefs, and our tolerance, understanding, and patience grew. We asked difficult questions which ignited our thinking and forced us to a new awareness.

The real challenges for me came after leaving the program. I entered a time of restructuring, rethinking, and reshaping ideas. After leaving the stimulation and support from YIP, I needed reminding about possibilities so I didn’t lose heart. YIP was a program that balanced study and experience. Carrying this balance out into the world led me to extensive travel and an apprenticeship with an anthroposophical doctor and biodynamic farmer. I helped start a farm, discovered a love of teaching, met the man I have since married, and found my way to a graduate program in Waldorf education.

After teaching three years in a Waldorf grade school, I was forced to leave due to an inability to obtain a work visa. During the year that followed, before receiving the appropriate working papers, the skills I had learned from YIP became a mode of survival. A network of compassionate individuals fed me lines of hope and opportunity that I hungrily devoured. I developed compassion for a system that tore me from people and a profession that I loved and forced me to reshape my life. For the last year I have had the great privilege of teaching preschool at Sophia’s Hearth, a Waldorf early childhood center in Keene, New Hampshire.

When I asked my dearest friend if she thought my YIP experience had affected my life, she replied, “You did more than get an MEd; you learned a specific style of teaching that meets children where they are and guides them in a meaningful way. YIP allowed you to travel both during and after the program. The whole experience helped you become the kind of person who can listen respectfully, openly, and earnestly to someone with whom you disagree. I feel strongly that it helped you open and develop your heart, your mind, and your spirit.”

The intentional creation of YIP with its roots in anthroposophy carved a bow from which the students, as arrows, are sent forth into the world. The program played an essential role in determining my path to impact the world.

Lauryn Morley is a Waldorf alumna who grew up in South Africa. She received her MEd from Antioch University New England.