SYMT Groundwork : A 2021 Strategic Priority

Sixteen leaders from six African nations came together in August of 2018  to participate in YouthHOPE’s School of Youth Ministry Trainers (SYMT). SYMT is a year-long program that equips national leaders to train youth workers in their region using YouthHOPE’s training curriculum and training methodology. At the end of the first session in August each participant was tasked with going back to their country to start training youth workers with what they had learned. They dreamed big and planned to hold 9 training events and train 172 people.

In February of 2019 we all gathered again for our second session with anticipation; excited to hear about what God had done in our six months apart. On the first day of training, one by one, each participant stood and told the account of their training events: their challenges, their successes, and their results. We were charting the numbers on a poster board and our hearts swelled as the chart grew with each presentation. It wasn’t long until we realized that they had not only met their goal, but they were going to surpass it. Not only did they surpass their goal, but when the final tally was in, it was literally off the chart. The poster board wasn’t big enough to register the whopping 346 youth workers they had trained in over 23 training events. The YH team crunched some numbers and realized that these 16 leaders had trained more youth workers in 6 months than our team had in an entire year.  

This is the power of multiplication and results like these are why the YouthHOPE team is committed to making the School of Youth Ministry Trainers available to leaders all over the world. We have held this program in both Africa and Asia in the past and now our team is setting our sights on launching an SYMT in Latin America or Europe.

This year one of our three strategic priorities is to lay the necessary groundwork to launch an SYMT in one of these regions in 2022.  We are working to cultivate new relationships and strengthen existing ones through video calls, online trainings, and in-person youth ministry trainings. These relationships will allow us to better understand the current needs of youth and youth workers in each region as well as identify potential hosts and participants for an SYMT.  We believe that as more trainers are equipped, youth ministries will be strengthened, and the lives of countless youth will be transformed. 

If you would like to contribute financially to this exciting project, visit https://newinternational.org/give/campaign/school-of-youth-ministry-trainers or click the link below.