Young Life New York City

Young Life has a long history of working with youth...we've been working with kids for over 70 years. We have ministries in all 50 states and in another 90 countries. We get to bring the skills and resources that we've learned and that we've trained in to care about kids specifically in New York City.

Young Life's outreach starts with adults concerned enough about kids to go where they are, on their turf and in their culture--building bridges of mutual respect and authentic friendship. These relationships don’t happen overnight — they take time, patience, trust and consistency. Leaders faithfully engage kids in after-school programs in the Harlem, hang out with teenagers at a mall in Queens, or play pick-up basketball with at-risk youth in Brooklyn. We listen to their stories and learn what’s important to them because we genuinely care about their joys, triumphs, heartaches and setbacks.

A model Young Life ministry includes: people praying, volunteers doing contact work in it’s various forms, a committee of adults to help support the work, and a group of kids engaged in club, campaigners, or going to camp.Today, Young Life New York City has ministries operating in 19 of NYC's 59 community-districts. In the last 6 years our team has grown from 3 to 30 staff members, including 100 new volunteers in that same time span. We are currently operating at 20% of our overall goal, having at least one ministry in every community district. This effort took us 7 years to achieve. Young Life NYC's next target is to operate in 30 community-districts and to double our impact by 2016.