The SUUSI Young Adult program offers a strong, caring, loving community to participants ages 18 to 25. We come together to live in a dorm for one week a year and participate in activities made by, and for young adults. It’s a smaller community within SUUSI’s own welcoming arms where you will meet new, interesting, and caring people every year you come.
The YA program also offers exciting workshops that stretch the mind, body and soul. 
Each year the YA Staff put together a host of workshops and events based on the year’s themes, our individual experiences, and any past events that people still crave. Workshop topics include religion, politics, environment, beauty secrets, wrestling, sexuality, gender stereotypes, screen printing, being single, music, thrift store shopping tattooing and piercing (which involves an exciting field trip to downtown Blacksburg), and more.
We also have plenty of late night activities such as a love feast, hilarious games, dirty dancing, kick-ass movies, late night 7-11 trips and karaoke, not to mention spontaneous craziness that usually breaks out. Watch out for performances: YA talent tends to surface at the coffee house, cabaret, and other more random outlets as well. The YAs also dominate the dance floors at CACHE and Serendipity. We participate in two important bridging ceremonies as well. One ceremony will be to welcome the teens that will be young adults at the following SUUSI, and the second to recognize those YAs that are 25 years old and will be leaving the YA program and transitioning in to SUUSI’s median programming.
This is a new and very exciting year for the Young Adult program as it will certainly be for the entire SUUSI Community. When we look at the meaning of this year’s theme, ‘Pilgrimage’, we often think about returning to the roots of our spiritual, communal, or personal beliefs. This year, SUUSI returns to Radford, a place that has welcomed us in many previous years, and where from 1975 to 1979, we grew from 640 members to the current number of nearly 1,000 people coming every year. This year, as we go on this Pilgrimage to Radford, it is time to think about the roots of the SUUSI community and the UU heritage we share. But what does this pilgrimage mean for the YA program in itself?
This year, the YA Staff is hoping to bring the ideas of returning to the SUUSI roots into our whole process of planning our events, workshops, discussions, and worships for the YA community. In this we hope to bring back focus on our integration into this amazing Intergenerational community that SUUSI offers us. We will be modifying old events, or offering new ones that we hope to bring to everyone in the SUUSI community. We hope to bring our community out to everyone else so that every SUUSI participant might get to experience the community bonds that have brought YA’s back to SUUSI year after year after year.
We do this by holding various staff positions, continuing leading the daily athletics, inviting other SUUSI-goers to specific workshops, and leading some community time activities too. And watch out for our performers: YA talent tends to surface at the coffee house, cabaret, and other, more random outlets as well. And make sure to come challenge us to a dance off on the floors at Cache and Serendipity.
Wondering what you should pack for the week? Must haves are cameras, swimsuits, music, instruments, and fans! Also, bring your games, toys, inflatable anythings, your favorite clothes for all types of weather and for dressing up, an open mind, good ideas, and great feelings. If you bring a book, this is fair warning that you will have little time to read it. That is, unless you enjoy seclusion and introversion, which is totally cool too.
One of the ways to get to know the YAs and be a part of the community before and after SUUSI is through the young adult listserv. If you would like to join and share with the community on-line, simply email us! And if you have any additional questions/concerns/ ideas about the YA program, feel free to email the YA Director, Davin Taddeo, at ya@suusi.org.
Can't wait to see you there!