How's Your Attitude: Camp Childcare Recruiting

All right? Question...and be honest with yourself.....How is your attitude about recruiting childcare volunteers for camp?
Are you ignoring it for now because you have no idea who to ask?

Do you have a full list of people that you have thought of, but whom you have not asked because you are pretty sure they won't be able to take a week off and/or pay the camp fee?

Are you so busy with teen moms, babies and mentors that you have not even thought about camp childcare?

Having helped recruited and tracked over 1500 childcare volunteers in the last four years, every year I feel a little guilty as we head into camp. These childcare volunteers are taking precious time to come to camp. They, many times, are laying out their hard-earned cash to come. AND the clincher.... they have no idea how tough a week it can be!

Lately however, I have been convicted that I (maybe we?) do not need to feel guilty. Every year at the end of the camp week, I see childcare volunteers who are so grateful they got to be a part of camp. They are grateful they got to see Jesus change the lives of teen moms and their children. AND the clincher, they are grateful because they encountered Jesus in their own faith journey in a new and exciting way....in a way that could ONLY happen at YoungLives camp as a childcare volunteer.

So as we ask childcare volunteers to come with us to camp, let us rejoice and look forward to how He is going to work!

Camp Childcare QR Code

Have you seen those little black-and-white, pixelated boxes everywhere? Kinda like this one?

Well...for the less-than-tech-saavy, those little boxes are a scannable image that holds an embedded weblink.  And...the one above is our very own!! Made just for advertising Camp Childcare!!  So feel free to download that image, copy and paste it, scan it from your phone....just PASS IT ON!

Life of the Beloved

We recently did a Young Lives Divisions Meeting and discussed the book, "Life of the Beloved" by Henri Nouwen. This a great book to use for mentor trainings, devotionals, etc. The content is about how we are taken, blessed, broken, and given. Very inspirational.

Making Online giving even easier!

Did you know that you can pre-populate the info for your area in the online giving and add a link to all your correspondences and to your msite? What a great way to help your donors be reminded of giving and have an easy link to make that happen. Follow this link to the Staff Web site Designate Online Donations for Specific Funds   Once you get it set up with your area info your donors will have an easy way to link into the online giving.

"Toxic Charity"

"Toxic Charity: How Churches and Charities Hurt Those They Help."


It's a great book to help think through the issues around enabling girls vs. helping them. Some of the ideas include: 

1. Never do for the poor what they can do for themselves
2. Limit one-way giving to emergencies
3. Empower the poor through employment, lending, and investing, using grants sparingly to reinforce achievements
4. Subordinate self-interest to the needs of those being served
5. Listen closely to those you seek to help
6. Above all, do no harm

Changing Up Club!

Change up club every once in a while and invite mentors to bring their families to club with them! Here's an example e-mail from a coordinator in upstate New York: 


"Come join us at our New Life Christmas Party. We are going to have finger foods, hang out and play some games and just enjoy the girls and their babies (children). You can invite your husband or boyfriend to this event, this way they can meet the girls and understand why you take time out of your busy lives to minister to the girls and their babies. We will have extra child care for your children too. We will be together eating 6-6:30 and then the children can go play at 6:30.-7:30 with our childcare workers." 


What a cool idea!