YWAM Responds to COVID-19

Latest YWAM News for 03/19/2020

Youth With A Mission has been carefully considering and praying about our response to the rapidly changing COVID-19 situation.

We are a thoroughly decentralised movement with about 1,600 training and team locations in about 160 nations. We are encouraging every one of those operating locations to comply with the advice of their particular government.

We recognize that government advice varies from nation to nation. In most cases, it means self-isolation or enforced isolation of anyone exhibiting symptoms, and screening wherever that is available. It usually means hand washing, extra cleanings, and social distancing, including limiting the size of gatherings, limiting travel and other social activities.

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We are encouraging each location to have a recognised Crisis Management Team which stays up-to-date with the latest governmental advice and assures its implementation.

As a result of these recommendations, many of our outreach teams will be unable to travel to their previously planned destinations, so we are encouraging them to assist those in need in their local communities. Where outreach teams have been on the field since before the pandemic was recognised, many of those students will go directly back to their homes, and will usually need to meet self-isolation guidelines before and after travel. Some students currently in their lecture phase will also return home. Our training locations are working on ways for our students to complete their Discipleship Training Schools or other programs.

YWAM’s cofounder Darlene Cunningham recently expressed the approach we are taking:
“These are amazing days. Though everything is changing around us on a daily and sometimes hourly basis, the first thing I want to say to you is, God is still on the throne! Nothing has caught Him by surprise. And in the midst of it all, there are amazing opportunities, if we will look to Him in faith. What the enemy has intended for evil through COVID19, I believe God will turn and use for good, both on a corporate/YWAM basis, and for each one of us individually.”