You know how sometimes people preface things by asking, “Do you want to the good news or the bad news first?” Well, friends, we’re excited to announce that there’s pretty much no bad news! We got plenty of that over the last two years, but now, it’s GOOD! Your YSP Foundation Board met with the directors of the Shrine to discuss what our relationship would be like now that the Foundation is a separate entity. Here’s the breakdown of good news:
1) The Foundation, for all intents and purposes, can have YSP. We take over the funding and administration duties, put on the program and the show. We can even call it Youth Sing Praise!
2) The Shrine will allow us to use the Amphitheatre for our performance! as well as some other places around the Shrine for various aspects of the program.
3) We can have all the assets purchased for YSP, including–and these are pretty important–costumes, props, set pieces! And also archival, administrative and financial documents. The documents don’t sound too exciting but they will allow us to establish ourselves as a non-profit and begin taking tax-deductible donations. And the archives will let us share photos and fun things with our alumni!
3a) We can not store our materials at the Shrine any longer but a
friend of YSP has offered his barn. So we’ll have a moving
party some time this fall. We’ll need helping loading from
the Shrine Pole Barn, transporting, and unloading. Thanks to
the efforts of Donna E, Amanda S and friends, everything is
super organized!
3b) What other assets might YSP have? Well, you may remember
things like bottles, buttons, binders, door-hangers, cots,
forks (yes, we bought our own), etc.
4) We will continue to share Oblate spirituality at YSP. To help us maintain that, we will continue to have Oblates among our YSP staff (like Fr. Raul and Fr. David) and we’ll have one sitting on our Board.
5) The Shrine will help us in publicizing the show to their guests, web visitors and in the Belleville community.

Overall, the new director, Fr. Tom Ovalle, OMI was very generous, kind and encouraging. We are looking forward to a fruitful friendship that benefits the youth who participate in YSP and the community who shares in their witness.

With all these green lights, your Foundation Board members will keep pretty busy. We’ll need volunteers to help move our stuff, so let us know if you’re interested and we’ll keep you updated on when and where we’ll be doing that. Thanks for your continued prayers and support.