Great Opportunity!

Looking for a worthwhile place to invest your organizational abilities? Look no further!

Opportunity for administrator/office manager
AfriCom, YWAM’s communication team for Africa, is offering an amazing opportunity for an administrator/office manager. Based in Muizenberg, South Africa, this is a key role in coordinating the work of AfriCom around the continent.

This person will offer general administrative support to the team, organizing events and developing effective systems to help manage a growing and dynamic ministry. There is also scope for him/her to participate in teaching and presentations and of course to travel widely to meet with teams and attend events throughout Africa.

Communication Teams in YWAM
Back in 2004, during a time of prayer, YWAM’s Global Leadership Team received the insight that the organization had an ineffective central nervous (communication) system.

Lynn Green, the International Chairman of YWAM, explained “That picture of a healthy body is the ideal picture of what our goal is … in reconnecting all our communication cells. Communication is vital to the Kingdom of God and to God’s purposes.”

Motivated by this insight, YWAM has mobilized communication teams to seek creative ways for YWAM ministries to effectively and efficiently communicate with one another. For Africa, God clearly spoke of multiplying communication teams across the continent.

AfriCom
The AfriCom core team is based in Muizenberg, South Africa. We are developing three regional AfriCom teams, in South Africa, Nigeria and Uganda.

AfriCom facilitates YWAM’s Africa projects by mobilizing people, prayer and resources, enabling YWAM teams to play a sustainable and transformational role in their communities. We do this by working closely with YWAM leaders to gather information from around the continent and communicate about YWAM’s work in Africa through print, web, video, text message, data and face-to-face presentations.

YWAM is committed to sharing knowledge across the continent. “By sharing information, we enable ministry teams to be better resourced,” said Lydia Smit, AfriCom Missions Communicator. “It is a way of empowering isolated communities with information that they can use to make informed decisions.” Missions communicators play a key role in attracting resources and staff to support needy projects.

If you have good administrative skills and enjoy diversity, if you are an excellent problem-solver and like to shape your own job, playing a part in a variety of exciting projects, then this could be the place for you!

Our current office manager leaves at the end of 2010. We are looking for a replacement to start anytime from October 2010 onwards.

Interested?
Contact Miranda Heathcote at ywamafricom@gmail.com for more information.

Introducing Peter Clemison

YWAM AfriCom is pleased to welcome Peter Clemison to the team at our Cape Town office. He is joining us with a specific focus on fundraising. Though fresh from a Discipleship Training School at the Muizenberg YWAM base, Peter is no stranger to the world of communications and missions. Before joining YWAM, he worked for Scripture Union England and Wales as their marketing and fundraising manager. Peter brings with him a wealth of knowledge and experience from the Christian charity sector and is well versed in raising awareness for mission work around the world.

"I am living here in Cape Town with my wife, Becky. She too has taken a position within YWAM under the ministry to prevent trafficking, known as Justice ACTs. This is our first time to live in South Africa (outside of DTS), so we're just aclimatising ourselves to missionary life in the rainbow nation!

"It's wonderful to join such an enthusiastic team of communicators for mission. YWAM is doing so much across this continent. Even here in Cape Town, the YWAM bases have seen an exponential growth in ministry. AfriCom is the team tasked with linking all the Africa mission work together and bringing that to the wider world of YWAM. I'm looking forward to building relationships with the diverse ministries across Africa and sharing what each one is doing."

A global communication network

The great thing about being part of YWAM's network of Communication Teams is the way it puts us in touch with what's happening in missions all around the world. In YWAM communications, no matter where we are in the world, we all share the goal of strengthening our missionaries and enabling them to do their Kingdom work more effectively; whilst mobilizing people, prayer and resources for the ongoing need to take the message of Jesus to the nations. This week Miranda is in Harpenden, UK, to work with communicators on the International Chairman's Team who have been managing our international website ...

For the past 8 years, AfriCom has been working to serve the YWAM missionaries in Africa. We have been producing communication tools - magazines and videos, bulk text messages and so on - as well as offering communication training, all to facilitate the work of our missionaries and to help them reach out to the communities of this continent. We love to hear that missionaries feel more connected to the rest of our global missions movement as a result of what we do, that they are able to access information that makes their work easier, that they can find information in their own language; we love to champion the work they are doing by telling others their stories (check out the latest story here). We also love to hear that more people are praying for the nations of Africa, that more people are giving towards missions and that more people from around the world are taking steps to visit Africa themselves, whether short or long term, to play their part in taking the message of the Kingdom to others.

Increasingly, we have had the opportunity to take this passion for good missions communication beyond the borders of our continent. When we see the difference improved communication makes for our missionaries in Africa, we are keen to be part of similar efforts in other parts of the world. This month marks a significant development in the scope of our work as we take on the gathering of news and stories for YWAM's primary 'face' on the web, www.ywam.org.

We are thrilled to be serving believers around the world who have an interest in engaging in some way with missions, and who visit our site to find out how to pray, give or go. We are looking forward to having our Com Team network contribute stories, translations and development ideas. And it's fun to think that from the tip of Africa we can be championing missionaries serving in communities all over the world!

Training for better Communication

One of the things that Com Teams do to support YWAM missionaries is to offer them training in communication. Here at AfriCom, we have made a number of short courses available - in newsletter writing, fundraising, photoshop and short story writing, to name a few. The primary training strategy by Com Teams globally, however, is the week-long Basic Communication Workshop, or BCW (everything in YWAM gets shortened to an acronym, it's part of our corporate culture!).

The Basic Communication Workshop is just that: basic. It is a week of training for any and all YWAMers on communication skills that will help them to be more effective as a missionary in their context. The course touches on interpersonal communication - how to resolve conflict, how to be aware of cross-cultural issues, how to chair a meeting, or communicate a decision - which are commonly issues relating to functioning within one's missionary team and with those amongst whom you work.

We also focus on more 'concrete' skills, such as writing and photography, or design skills - those things that relate to functioning in partnership with one's sending church, or to promoting one's ministry.

As you may be aware, YWAM staff members all work voluntarily - even the president! This means that every missionary forms partnerships with family members or people from their churches who feel their part in missions is to give so that others can go. This strategy has led to amazing growth for us as a mission; YWAM is the one of the largest missionary organizations in the world, working in over 150 countries with over 16,000 staff, all whom rely on God’s provision and a team of people behind them.

This makes communication a crucial part of every YWAMers job. As our financial partners bless us, we want to also bless them by keeping them up-to-date with news from our area of ministry and by helping them to feel a part of our work. Photos, stories and videos are all great ways to do this and increasingly there are very helpful Internet tools available too. Oftentimes, people are very keen to bring a new aspect to their communication - to add a blog or a website to their normal newsletter - but they're not sure where or how to start. The BCW enables them to dip their toes in the water and before long they are swimming!

Although the BCW is short - more of an introduction that a comprehensive course - it is a useful way to boost both enthusiasm and capacity for this all-important aspect in the life of a missionary. Staying in touch with supporters can be fun, dynamic and encouraging and - when it is done well - missionaries find that their supporters want to give more than money, often taking on home-based projects to help the ministry, or planning a visit to get involved on the ground.

Com Teams have run Basic Communication Workshops all over the world; from Argentina to Russia, from Uganda to Thailand. This year, AfriCom is planning to run one in South Africa, as well as our more advanced 3-week workshop in Tanzania.

For more information, or to get involved, email us at ywamafricom@gmail.com

Communicators help YWAM celebrate 50 years

In case you missed it, YWAM is celebrating 50 years of missions work this year! Throughout the year there are special events being held in every region of the world, giving YWAM staff, students, alumni and supporters the opportunity to look back on the milestones of the last half-century and give thanks for all that has been accomplished.

Everywhere where there is a Com Team, the members of those teams are taking this great opportunity to support their YWAM community at these events. Some are offering their practical skills to help make the celebrations run smoothly through taking care of all the technical details of showing video, maintaining good quality sound and even producing name-tags. In other places - such as in Uganda next month - Com Team members will be producing a photographic time-line of YWAM's story in their region and producing other visual pieces to help celebrate 50 years of missionary endeavour.

Here in Cape Town our team has been working on a commemorative magazine of YWAM's history in Africa. It has been an incredible project, with more contributors than any other project we have undertaken. The willingness of so many people to get involved means that we have successfully produced the very first compilation of YWAM's story on this continent ever! From design, to photos, to stories, to translation in French and Portuguese, to printing and mailing - everything has been done in partnership with very special people from around the world. Today boxes of those magazines are being mailed from India, where they were printed, to YWAM centres around Africa. At every 50th celebration in Africa YWAM staff will receive complimentary copies of the magazine.

We are thrilled to give these special gifts to the unsung heroes out there - Jo or Jenny YWAMer, giving their time and their energies to see sustainable change come to their communities. As they read the stories of those who have gone before them, may they be strengthened to persevere.

After all, we are not only celebrating what has passed ... we are eagerly anticipating what is still to come!

Communication from West Africa

You may have heard on the news about the violence taking place in Nigeria. AfriCom staff have been working with local leaders there to compose a news piece from the perspective of the Youth With A Mission staff on the ground. The article has just been posted on our international website.

Day 2 update from CRIT consultation 2010