Graduation with a difference

The Youth With A Mission (YWAM) campus that I work on is quite a large campus with a little over 120 full time staff, and so we have training courses running here year round. With new ones starting every quarter, and also graduating every quarter. This means I have seen a number of graduations over this last year, from the Discipleship Training School (DTS) which is the foundational course for everything that YWAM does, to design schools, humanities schools, and community development schools. Harpenden is also the main UK campus for the university of the nations (UofN) (http://www.uofnkona.edu), which is YWAM’s university; training and equipping people to enter all spheres of society (i.e. politics, science, healthcare etc).

The graduation that we had last week was special because it was more than just a school graduation, it was a degree ceremony for two trainees. The trainees who were awarded degrees have undertaken a number of different training courses, in several different places round the world over the last few years. These courses have given them credits with certain faculties within the UofN and now they have enough to be awarded a degree within this faculty. It was great to be able to honour them for all the work they have done, and what they have achieved. One graduated in the sciences, with a degree in community development, and the other in humanities with a degree in nation building and reconciliation.

It is such a blessing to see the people who you help to teach and mentor achieve the qualifications and then go onto use that either within YWAM, but more often outside the organization. To be able to see them living the passion that they have along side their faith is very inspiring, and I am looking forward to seeing many more graduating over the years as this campus grows and runs more training.

A chance to teach...

The foundations in community development course (FCD) that is currently running here on the campus gave me the chance to do a week of teaching with their trainees this month. I was asked to focus on environmental stewardship, which is a passion of mine, especially after working in marine and terrestrial conservation in the Seychelles for several years.

The trainees are form a variety of backgrounds (Korea, Malawi, Switzerland, Cameroon, Rwanda, Egypt, USA and England), which was amazing. Getting to spend time with such a variety of culture and worldview was a real privilege. We spent the week having discussions around a number of topics that I felt would best help them in this subject. I am not so good at just speaking/lecturing people, I like to get them to think, so to have the freedom to facilitate and have discussion was amazing. The trainees all said at the end of the week that they enjoyed sharing ideas and trying to work things out together.

I felt that they learned a lot, and it was really good that they saw that it is no good addressing just the problem and setting up legislation. You actually have to get involved with the community and educate and mentor the people so that they can catch the vision for what they have. It is more than just about looking after the animals, it involves resource management, such as fresh water etc, pollution management and so on, it is a big subject.

But why is this a passion of mine? Why do I think we should be looking after the planet? Because God has given it to us as a gift and asked us to look after it for him. God created it all. If you were given something by a good friend, and told you can use it, but that they would like it back eventually, are you going to look after it so that they can have it back in good condition? It would be selfish if you did not care for what your friend gave you.