How often can you say that you have had a profound impact on a teenager and watched them turn their life around? Maybe once? Twice? The members of Young Life would most likely answer around 20-60 times. Young Life is a religious organization on campus that was described by Young Life Leader Jen Marshall as a, "Christian Ministry to High School Students to help them build relationships with a Mentor in hopes of helping them build a relationship with God."
Young Life is not only a club on Longwood's campus, but is a national organization that is located in many communities all over the world. The Young Life website, www.younglife.org, states that it ministers to about 646,395 High School students per year. The Young Life located in Farmville takes students from Longwood University and Hampden-Sydney College and four other local schools: Fuqua, Prince Edward, Randolph-Henry High Schools, and Central Middle School. Central Middle School was just recently added as Young Life here recently expanded to include "WyldLife," which essentially is Young Life geared for Middle School students.
Becoming a Young Life Leader is not an easy task to accomplish; it takes dedication and a love of working with students. There is a program for students interested in becoming Young Life Leaders, called First Year, which teaches students about the morals and values of Young Life. That program meets once a week for a semester, but you do not have to go to every meeting to be eligible to be a Leader the following semester. You are technically only required to go to one meeting to become a Leader. The second semester focuses on training you to become an effective Young Life Leader, and then you are placed at one of the four schools where Young Life sends students to serve.
Something that is unique to Young Life is there are no concrete requirements (i.e., no GPA requirement, and you do not have to be a full time student). All they ask is for those interested to have a love for God, dedication and a love for working with kids.
When asked if a lot of Young Life Leaders participated in Young Life before coming to college Jen Marshall responded, "About half of our Young Life Leaders either did not participate in Young Life in high school or never actually heard of it before coming to college."
If you have never heard of Young Life or never got involved in it your high school, do not write it off! The commitment is a lot. You are required to do four activities every week: contact work, club, campaigners and leadership. Contact work is when you are spending 2-5 hours a week engaging in your student's activities, meaning going to their sports games or other such extracurricular activities. This is done individually, so you can pick as many hours as you are able to dedicate. Club is also just known as "crazy fun with students," according to Jen Marshall, "it is one hour a week where we play games, have skits and play music with them. We then have a 10 minute talk by a Leader about Jesus in their life that the students are able to relate to theirs." Campaigners is for students who want a deeper discussion about the Word of God. This happens once a week for an hour at a time, usually before High School starts for the day. Leadership is where the Young Life Leaders get together, and "practice what they preach." They go in depth to the word of God, and they are working to constantly build their relationship with God.
There is no doubt that Young Life is an organization that will take up a lot of your time, but the dedication is worth the results. You get the opportunity to truly make a difference in not only the student's lives, but in your own as well. Jen Marshall ended with "The Best Experience I have had with Young Life has been building relationships with the other Young Life Leaders. I've met people who have become my friends, roommates and people I can see myself talking to for the rest of my life."
