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 | | World Vision attacks poverty by going after its root causes. For more than 50 years, the Christian humanitarian organization has been serving children and families in struggling communities throughout the world. Here in the metropolitan District of Columbia area, we use that experience to come alongside churches and faith-based organizations already hard at work to lift their neighbors out of poverty. Vision Youth is World Vision’s response to poverty here in the metro area and other cities. The youth-focused initiative, launched in DC in summer 2002, builds bridges of relationship and under-standing between young people and their communities. At the core of Vision Youth are Youth Outreach Workers (YOWs), compassionate adults from the community who know the challenges and issues young people face, and who are committed to providing a caring, stable influence in their lives. |
Vision Youth has helped local churches hire and train four YOWs this year. First Baptist Church has hired Raemon Nelson for youth outreach, and Joseph Williams is the YOW for Redemption Ministries (Inner Thoughts Inc.). The Rev. Orlando Bego serves the community surrounding Upper Room Baptist Church, and Treasure Iwuoha is the YOW for River of Life Church. | |
Aside from their outreach and mentoring duties, YOWs recruit and arrange training for volunteers who are willing to help carry the burden for these high-risk youth. And most importantly, they provide partner churches with a staff member who can devote his or her energies full time to youth outreach, a luxury few inner-city churches can afford. World Vision helps to pay YOW salaries and benefits for the first five years, (on a descending scale) while helping our partner churches learn how to financially support Vision Youth and make it a sustainable, long-term agent of change.
Training and technical assistance also help pastors and their congregations enhance and broaden their involvement with neighborhood families in need.
Education—The Firm Foundation
When it's fully implemented, Vision Youth will begin its journey with children when they are young by matching struggling elementary school students with trained tutors and mentors from partner churches and community organizations. These tutors will provide not only academic help, but also emotional nurture ad sometimes the only consistent, supportive adult influence in these youngsters' hard lives.
As young people mature, their needs change and YOWs take their ministry to parks, schools, juvenile detention halls, and the streets––wherever troubled youth are found. They provide strong role models and the influence of a caring adult who can help young people succeed in school and set goals for the future. They help high school students and young adults find resources to follow through on those goals, whether it’s by providing discipleship, or a referral to an academic specialist, drug-treatment program, counseling, or job training.
How You Can Help
Volunteers and YOWs provide young people with guidance and a caring relationship, which often is lacking in their lives, and the most important gift—hope. Here’s how your support can help:
• $30,000 provides one year of funding for a full-time Youth Outreach Worker, who can be a positive influence in the lives of approximately 100 young people.
• $5,000 funds in-depth program activities—such as personal and academic mentoring, life-skills training, and leadership—for 25 high-risk young people.
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| Vision Youth Help provide tutoring, life skills training, and a caring relationship to high-risk youth. | | ||
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| The Storehouse Provide school supplies, clothes, toys, household goods and building supplies for strengthening families,schools and neighborhoods. | | ||
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| Tools for Transformation Help provide the organizational, planning and leadership tools to transform a neighborhood. | | ||
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Read about what is happening in Vision Youth programs around the country by clicking on the location name below. |
