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EPYC (Empowering Peacemakers in Your Community) is an award winning youth empowerment initiate. Established in 2004, EPYC has fast become the leading youth nonviolence training programs in the nation.
EPYC's Founder and Creative Director Jarrod McKenna and his team have gained permission from the Education Department to conduct these seminars which use music, media and visual arts to engage students in engaging our world. To book, support the movement, or receive updates of EPYC’s work contact <font color="#ff0000">parts@wa.su.org.au</font> To read EPYC’s creative director's blog click here EPYC provides spaces where groundbreaking scholarship, personal stories and experiments with nonviolence assist students in reshaping their own day to day experiences of conflict. The experiential seminars create space where young people are invited to:
Through the lives of people like Gandhi, Dorothy Day, Martin Luther King, Badshah Khan, Vincent Lingiari and many others, students are given the tools to think critically about the period of history they are living through and think creatively about the power of nonviolence in their own lives.
"One of the doctors I met in Iraq said (with tears in his eyes), 'This violence is for people who have lost thier imagination.' Jarrod McKenna and the good people of EPYC are prophets of imagination. They are on a mission to create new heroes and sheroes and to reclaim God's dream for this world. And as they help young folks to learn not to hurt each other, hopefully the nations will take some lessons." Shane Claiborne, activist, author and recovering sinner "Around the world there is an emerging generation of young leaders who are rediscovering the radical implications of Jesus’ message and are letting their lives speak of these alternatives to the cycles of violence, poverty and environmental destruction. Jarrod McKenna is one such young leader Australia has to offer, and his EPYC program promises to empower many more." Rev. Tim Costello, CEO of World Vision Australia
Young people participate through activities which give them practical and personal examples of making choices to empower a peace making process for themselves and their community. EPYC works towards providing networks, which assist in the continuing development of cultures of peace.
Jarrod’s work in schools, prisons, churches and the community, his gentle passion and ongoing activism has earnt him the reputation of being a "peace evangelist" and a facilitator in creating a generation that hungers and thirsts for personal, social and ecological justice. Jarrod’s work however is not limited to youth and with ‘bigger kids’ he’s one of Western Australia’s most sort after and respected trainers in nonviolent activism. He’s run workshops at the invitation of diverse groups from world leading eco-philosopher Joanna Macy, to charismatic churches and been the guest speaker at events organised by Greenpeace, The Wilderness Society, the Greens and the Young United Nations. When not running workshops, preaching or teaching, Jarrod can often be found at home in the Catholic Worker/Anabaptist inspired Peace Tree Christian Community in one of his city’s lowest socio-economic areas. There his ‘sisters and brothers’ teach him to pray, to laugh, to grieve, to live on the land in ways that speak of the Kingdom and remind him to do the dishes. Jarrod has been nominated for the WA Youth Awards for the past 2 years for his work for social and ecological justice with young people. The only faith community to ever recieve the Nobel Peace Prize, the Quakers, have recently awarded him the Donald Groom Peace Fellowship for his work with EPYC. But as yet no award for doing the dishes. EPYC in Jarrod’s own words: "This generation does not need more slick entertainment or clever answers that numb us to what is really happening in our world. Instead they long for a space where their deepest questions can be explored with people who are authentically living a solid alternative. EPYC allows for such a space. It’s my prayer that EPYC can contribute to the recovery of Christian discipleship in its life giving fullness: an earth affirming communal spirituality of transformative nonviolence that is both personal, social and ecological. To paraphrase Jesus in Mark 1:15, "God’s revolution has started! And we are now empowered to transform the way we’re living and get in on what God is doing!" That is what EPYC is about, inviting and equipping youth to live now what God wills the world to be. The exciting invitation to follow Jesus, to become what Dr. Martin Luther King called "extremist for love", taking part in God’s transformation of all creation. What Brian McLaren & Desmond Tutu helpfully call "God's dream" of justice, peace and joy becoming our waking reality."
EPYC – a dream for this generation. What is the dream?
To book, support the movement, or receive updates of EPYC’s work contact <font color="#ff0000">parts@wa.su.org.au</font> To read EPYC’s creative director's blog click here |
"EPYC is an exciting initiative to give young people the opportunity to learn about nonviolence in theory and application. In our troubled world, this is a timely offer. We must find ways of dealing with conflicts at the personal and political levels other than through violence…"Jo Vallentine, Nobel Peace Prize Nominee and Former Senator 
"[I meet] people who inspire hope and courage in me -emerging young leaders who "get" Jesus' message of the kingdom of God, and who are living it and giving it away. They see the integral nature of mission - that it brings together God and humanity, humanity and creation, grace and nature, contemplation and action, evangelism and social justice, faith and politics, the making of disciples and the making of peace. Jarrod McKenna and friends are beautiful examples of this new breed of emerging integral leaders. I thank God for them. May their tribe increase!" 
a: 82 Matlock St |