This year, the EDYD 2011 is celebrated in conjunction with the World Youth Day (WYD) 2011 in Madrid that occurs every 3 years. For Catholics residing in the Eastern side of Singapore, the East District Youth Day is a celebration that allows us to come together as East District Catholic Youth and find our identity in Christ together.

This year 2011's edition focuses on the theme of Identity and Discipleship, how we can be strongly rooted to our faith in Christ. The theme is based on the World Youth Day theme of being "Rooted and Built Up in Jesus Christ, Firm in the Faith." (Colossians 2:7)

Watch our Pope Benedict's message on this year's World Youth Day theme:

Thoughts from the Organisers...

While gathering to brainstorm and pray about the direction of this year's EDYD event, the youth ministries in our East-side parishes had to look into an age-old issue on the question of how to truly reach out to young people and to make our Faith come alive. We generally see a large number of youths every year but after Confirmation, we tend to lose them until they decide to come back in their later years.

The current team organising this event therefore came to the idea of going back to our roots, our foundation. And what better foundations than our Holy Mass - which we celebrate everyday in our church!

The team hopes to reach out to young people to exhort them to be rooted in Christ through the Mass, as this will allow them to continue to be strong and fervent believers of the faith well into their adult years.

Check out this year's event details >

More about EDYD's origins!

EDYD stands for "East District Youth Day".

The East District Youth Day is a bi-annual gathering of youths from the 6 East District Catholic Parishes (Holy Family, Holy Trinity, OLPS, Queen of Peace, Divine Mercy and St. Stephen) in Singapore.

The event was initiated by the Catholic Archdiocese Youth Centre in Singapore, as a bi-annual gathering for each of the Catholic District dioceses within Singapore, alternating with the nationwide Archdiocese Youth Day (AYD) which takes place every other year.

As a result of this initiative, the first EDYD was held in 2009, titled "Spera in Deo" (5 September 2009). Together the parishes gathered for a joint celebration of the Mass, held at CHIJ Katong Primary School.

Since then, the East District Youth Ministries had been excited about working together and went on to organise two more combined events for the East district parishes. They were "Fat Fish Friday" - held on 28 May 2010 at the Holy Trinity Church, and "Pleasure", held at Queen of Peace Church on 15 January 2011. These dialogues helped us tackle interesting topics about our faith and created some inter-parish dialogue and friendships.

We now look forward to this coming EDYD 2011 in August, themed "Rooted In Faith".

Fr. Christopher Lee from Holy Family Church has been our Spiritual Director overseeing these collaborative events.

Check out the Past Events page for more!

"Rooted and Built Up in Jesus Christ, Firm in the Faith."
(Colossians 2:7)