The first cohort of students of our new short-term program Social Ministry Workshop successfully completed their studies. Throughout the program, the students were acquiring the skills and competencies needed to implement social initiatives aimed at delivering God’s integral mission through serving vulnerable groups of people.
The reason which prompted us to launch the program lies in the fact that considering the significantly increased number of vulnerable groups in connection with the ongoing war, migration, and economic crisis, more and more committed Christians see the need to get actively involved in social ministry at their localities.
They host refugees, distribute food and necessities, visit the elderly, look after the disabled, support orphanages, and help single mothers, poor families, and internally displaced people, who often find themselves on the brink of survival, spending their scarce resources for medications and food.
At the same time, social ministers in Ukraine often lack the necessary skills and competencies such as integral vision of the ministry, communicative strategy, financial planning, management of volunteers, etc.
The Social Ministry Workshop allowed students to dive deeply into all components of social project management. They learned about an integral vision of the ministry, communicative strategy, financial planning, and management of volunteers. They researched the social context of their cities, identified key needs, worded their projects’ mission, vision, and values, and developed their projects’ implementation strategy. They also learned how to work on a project budget, fill in grant applications, and build communication with partners, volunteers, and their ministry target audiences.
We invite you to watch our video below to learn a bit more about Social Ministry Workshop through the eyes of it’s participants.
As part of their studies, six teams of students have developed full-scale social projects, which they are now fully equipped to implement in their societies.
Their projects target elderly people, families in crisis, youth leaders, children, and teens. All these projects are great examples of an integral mission put into practice, and we are happy to tell you a few words about each of them.
1.”SUPER STARist” is a project initiative that aims to inspire the elderly to an active life and create conditions for them to be able to do that. It’s been developed by the team of the Christian Youth Church from Zhytomyr city.
2. The Lviv Child Care Center representatives have developed a complex holistic approach to serving families in crisis. What makes it so valuable is that instead of serving children and parents separately, this project targets families as a whole, thus helping parents build a happy and healthy environment for their families to thrive.
3. Youth Leadership School is a project developed by the Good News Church from Oleksandria that will teach teams of teenagers and youth to launch social initiatives for city development.
4.”Misteriya” Space – a place where teens can attend various workshops for their personal growth. This is a project developed by the Outreach Church team from Poltava.
5.”LOADING” – an educational platform that will help school children study more effectively, prepare for External Independent Evaluation (ZNO), and consciously choose a place to study after school.
6.”LIGHT” Club – a place for extracurricular activities for children and youth. The initiative has been developed by the Source of Love Church from Nizhyn.
All teams participating in our program have shown great dedication to their projects and studied hard to be able to implement them. They have their hearts strongly set on putting their projects to God’s service. We believe that very soon, we will see how God is changing many people’s lives through these people and their initiatives.