YPN's Education Strategies put priority on matching sponsorship with programs for children and youth: after-school activities, tutoring, mentoring, summer day sports camps, skill building, recreation and community building, and more - all in a Christian atmosphere.
YPN provides funding and resources for weekly programs for children and youth living in high-risk communities. A significant ministry is our after-school programs through our network of ministry partners offering tutoring, mentoring, skill-building, recreation and security. Our summer programs reach in the most difficult of urban environments and Native American reservations with uniquely designed endeavors like summer day camps to keep kids off the streets, and weekly sports camps.
YouthPartnersNET is excited to announce the launch of a new program starting the summer of 2007 called CityConnexx. CityConnexx is designed to bring youth groups to Chicago and Denver for a week of "service in the city". We hope to bring support and resources to our ministry partners in Chicago and Denver through this program and believe this model can easily be duplicated in other cities.
The program originated in partnership with M-Fuge/Lifeway in Chicago 2004 as Urban Connexx. Though the program offered a tremendous value to our ministry partners for three years, Lifeway recently made the decision to cancel the Urban Connexx summer missions program. Seeing the impact this program had on our network of ministry partners in Chicago is what prompted us to take on the program in-house and again expand it to Denver. YPN partnered with Colorado Christian University in 2005 to bring Denver Linx to our ministry partners in the Denver area.
Visit http://www.CityConnexx.org for more program details.
In its third year, YPN and M-Fuge brought "Urban Connexx" back to Chicago. In 2006, 974 youth from suburban communities were recruited to serve for a week during the summer at twenty of our ministry partner sites and in their inner-city neighborhoods.
This eight week "summer in the city" program served 1800 children and youth in Chicago's inner city neighborhoods this year. These kids provided over 38,000 volunteer hours with a value over $700,000 to our network of ministry partners in Chicago. Their projects were matched to their interests and talents and included vacation bible school, sports clinics, and neighborhood clean-up. One group set up a computer lab, built a storage unit, and another group cleaned out one ministries basement creating usable space to serve more kids. This year a total of 32 decisions were made to accept Christ throughout the summer.
YPN partnered with Colorado Christian University to invite youth groups from all over the nation to come and spend a week "serving in the city". In its first summer, over 300 teens gave over 20,000 volunteer hours and tens of thousands of dollars in assistance to ten of our local ministry partners. This partnership provided a mission trip to youth groups from around the country to come and serve children and youth living in Denver's inner-city neighborhoods through our network of ministry partners. Each youth group was assigned a ministry to serve based on their talents and desires. By living at the ministry site and serving the kids at the ministry, they were given the opportunity to build lasting relationships that expand well beyond the week of service. Some of the groups provided sports clinics, vacation bible school, neighborhood clean-up projects, food pantries, and did ministry site work such as painting and minor construction repairs.
In only its second year, YPN again partnered with M-Fuge, and brought "Urban Connexx" back to Chicago. This year 1392 youth from suburban communities were recruited to serve for a week during the summer at 21 of our ministry partner sites and in their inner-city neighborhoods. This eight week "summer in the city" program served over 1900 children and youth in Chicago's inner-city neighborhoods. These groups helped renovate ministry buildings and apartments, they picked up trash in local parks, held Vacation Bible School in empty lots which they called "peace zones", and the afternoons were filled with games, water balloon activities, snacks, and bible lessons. These teens averaged 40 plus hours per week for a total of over 55,000 volunteer hours which the IRS says is worth $16 per hour which totals $890,000 of donated labor. 125 decisions to accept Christ were made by the end of the eight week program.
YPN partnered with M-Fuge, a division of Lifeway Church Resources, and launched "Urban Connexx" where 960 youth were recruited from 53 suburban churches to serve for a week during the summer at eight of our ministry partner sites and in their inner-city neighborhoods.
This eight week "summer in the city" program served more than 750 inner-city kids and provided over 40,000 volunteer hours as the Gospel was shared, volunteers created challenge courses and water carnivals in the parking lots, held Vacation Bible School in the parks, put siding on a church, painted ministry buildings and assisted with their summer day camps. Ninety decisions to accept Christ were made by the end of the summer. Between the volunteer hours, donated materials and monetary offerings, these groups gave over $450,000 worth of service and goods. In addition $15,000 was given in weekly offerings for scholarships so that urban kids can attend next summer.
