Equipping and empowering leaders continues to be a primary focus of the YFC Asia Pacific Area office. When we consider leadership development, we want to equip our leaders:
Equipping, developing, and retaining leaders is a critical need for YFC now and for the future. Strong, effective leadership is a critical success factor in YFC being able to reach the young people of our nations. For young people today, the pace of change is incredibly fast. In addition, there has been a real shift among youth-labeled post-modernism-which requires new methods and approaches by youth workers. Therefore, to understand and impact young people today, our leaders must be well prepared and equipped.
Over the past sixty years, we have learned much about young people, recruiting and maintaining staff and volunteers, training, and leadership development. We have tried many different approaches; some have worked well and others haven't. Our IGNITE Leadership Development initiative pulls from our experiences, incorporates the methods and approaches that are working the best now, and structures a leadership development model that looks out over the next five years.
Training and leadership development is most effective when it embraces the unique environments of local, national, regional, and international contexts.
- At the local and national level, many relationships can be developed, mentoring can occur, the local culture is understood, and specific "how-to" training can be implemented with many grassroots workers. It is at the local and national level where the majority of training and leadership development occurs within YFC and where the greatest quantity of workers can be equipped for the least cost.
- At the regional level, because the cultures across the region (for example, South Asia) have a common history and similar culture, leaders will more easily identify with their international counterparts and find commonality. But, at the same time, because there are still many differences between the nations, the participants' worldview and perspectives can be expanded and enlarged. This regional and context provides YFC opportunities to:
- provide a higher level of teaching,
- provide an opportunity to learn from other youth workers and be challenged,
- expose our workers to the larger family of YFC and the Kingdom of God,
- brainstorm with other youth leaders to meet the challenges facing us,
- encourage and challenge each other to stay the course and be refreshed, and
- challenge our leaders to more diligently reach out to new people groups within their country and surrounding nations-mission.
- At the Area and International level, the benefits of regional level training are expanded to an even wider influence as leaders from around the world gather. Settings like this, provide us the opportunity to engage even more experienced and motivational speakers, hear stories of God's movement from literally all across the globe, clearly see the diversity of God's kingdom, and encourage and inspire our leaders to continue their work and remain committed to reach young people for the Kingdom.
The numbers of individuals actively participating in the leadership development initiatives decreases as one moves beyond the nation to regional, area, and international contexts while costs increase. However, if the right leaders are identified for the regional and international training and they are encouraged, equipped, and challenged to go back and impact others, when they return to their nations, they are much more effective in equipping other leaders and local workers-and multiplication occurs. We have consistently witnessed this with key leaders within YFC over the past sixty years.
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