Last September YWAM's Global Leadership Team introduced the idea of an international Prayer Day for the entire mission, every month through 2008. This fabulous, unifying initiative is being run almost exclusively using Internet-based communication ... whilst emails featuring links to the comprehensive website are a most effective tool for much of the world, for some places these tools exclude people instead of including them. Many of our teams around Africa simply do not have adequate Internet access that is cheap enough, reliable enough or close enough to enable them to access these resources.
This challenge has forced AfriCom into getting familiar with bulk text messaging! As well as sending out smaller emails which do not require recipients to access information on the web, we have decided to send messages to as many YWAM staff cell phone numbers as we can. These short reminders will at least prompt people to pray and help to make them feel involved. The added advantage is that leaders, who for various reasons tend to be information bottlenecks, will have help reminding their staff to be part of this global initiative.
The bulk sms could be a great tool for a Comms Team like ours ... perhaps we could send out mini news updates to the whole field on a regular basis?
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I applaud this very creative way of getting the news out. Be of good cheer! Also, starting next month, we're producing a bullet-point summary of the month's prayer theme which is only 1/2 page long! This could really help out, too.
ReplyDeleteCheers,
Robert from Harpenden