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Be the change

CHANGE MAKERS – BE THE CHANGE!

Are you aged between 18-30? Do you want to stand up for justice and speak out for peace? Do you want to be equipped to share your faith at home and around the world? Do you want to help our global family do the same?

If you answered “yes” then be the change you want to see in the world and become a Change Maker with Release International. You could join our network of young people encouraging, enabling and supporting those following Jesus whatever the cost.

Change Makers is a twelve month mentoring programme designed to:

  • Equip you to be a Change Maker in your community
  • Connect you with other Change Makers in the UK and around the world
  • Enable you to be a support and encouragement to other Change Makers experiencing a high cost for their commitment to Jesus
  • Each term you and your mentor will work together developing challenges and opportunities for you to undertake involving advocacy, mission, prayer, fundraising and support
  • You will also have opportunities to travel aboard to connect with Change Makers who are facing persecution because of their commitment to Jesus

What is Change Makers?

Becoming a Change Maker allows you to explore discipleship through the perspective of persecuted Christian community. Through five diverse and exciting streams we equip you to learn biblical foundation and create a call to action.

In your first year you’ll develop your understanding of persecution whys and how? You’ll build a Biblical foundation of persecution. Then you’ll learn about ways we can make a change to support Persecuted Christians, by developing creative strategies with your mentor and community. You have the choice of picking 2 -5 different streams; Prayer; Fundraising; Support; Awareness and Campaigning; and Mission.

There is so much learn and be a part of on the Change Makers programme so there is an optional second year programme create to give you access to Release Potential connections and resources to continue being an ambassador for persecuted Christians. In your second year, you’ll select a major fundraising project based on our partners work and create your own personal campaign and fundraising plan for the project of your choice this will include an optional mission trip to Northern Ireland to encourage young people to join the programme. This second year programme will allow you to continue being a voice for the voiceless and putting into practice everything you’ve learnt.

THE CHANGE MAKER STREAMS

The Change Makers programme provides five bespoke streams to help create change which will support persecuted Christians. These streams are focused on prayer, fundraising, support, campaigning and mission.

Each stream has a series of activities and challenges designed for you to complete. You get to choose which activities you would like to do within each stream out of the five can do to make a difference designed to create a year filled with creativity while exploring your passions and talents.

PRAYER

Release takes prayer seriously. We will regularly and purposefully encourage our Change Makers to spend time with God. We challenge the prayer lives of our Change Makers as our core value recognises that the ‘…prayers of righteous people have great effect (James 5:16). We have created prayer resources including; devotionals, social media activities, and we observe the International Day of Prayer for the Persecuted Church in November 2019. We are eager to provide young and creative Christians the chance to connect with the reality of persecution; to understand what’s happening, and to pray accordingly. We want to prayerfully, creatively and practically support the needs of our global family.

FUNDRAISING

A massive part of the work we do at Release is serve our projects financially. This stream is dedicated to generating funds for our educational programme for pastors and church workers children we need support to send their children to school, we also fundraise for a retreat organised for the children on the programme. We encourage you to get passionate about fundraising in your local community groups, friends and family. This stream requires determination, creative thinking, great planning passion and perseverance. Sometimes fundraising can be daunting but we challenge and support our Change Makers with a number of resources and activities to help them reach their target.

SUPPORT

How do we offer practical support to our family in need? How can we use our gifts, talents and time to show our family that we are standing with them in their suffering? Throughout the year we answer these questions by finding creative solutions to enable people, young and old in our communities to practically support persecuted Christians.

One of our main activities is ‘We Care’ projects which consist of online forums, free resources, events and speaking engagements to help Christians support persecuted Christians.

Our Change Makers will be a part of creating and sending ‘We Care Packs’ to prisoners of faith and children on the Evangel Care scholarship programme in Sri Lanka.

CAMPAIGNING

Advocacy is a key part of the work of Release. An advocate is some-one who creates awareness on the behalf of someone else. So we want to equip you to spread the word about the persecuted church and explain to others that we are all one body in Christ and that we all have a role to play in confronting persecution because it affects us all. This stream is designed for the Change Maker to join the wider campaign ‘We Are One’ – Change Maker campaign. This is where we educate on the issue of persecution, share stories of persecuted Christians, write our personal reflections of persecuted discipleship, and encourage others to pray and petition for individuals across the world.

MISSION

Each summer we take all the active Change Makers abroad to work alongside our International Change Makers, young people who are facing persecution while serving Jesus. You will get to embrace family who experience persecution first-hand and learn what it means to pay a high price for your faith. This stream is totally focused on being a part of the wider Change Makers community on a short-term mission trip with Release partners; to help support an outreach programme for young Christian Change Makers aboard.

Mission Trip

We usually have an overseas trip but unfortunately this year our visit to Sri Lanka has had to be postponed due to the bombings in that country at Easter.

We hope to go to Sri Lanka again next year and whilst we are there we plan to encourage Christians who have experienced persecution, hear their stories and get involved in supporting a youth camp. We will also visit a village and hopefully fellowship together at one of the house churches. Other activities will include:

Interviewing young people at the camp and collecting stories

Helping with some practical work

Learning lessons about discipleship from Sri Lankan young people

Encouraging and building up Sri Lankan young people in their faith

Recording video blogs

The trip will cost you approximately £1,200 and you will need to make an initial £300 deposit when you start becoming a Change Maker, but you will then have a whole year to fundraise for the remaining cost of the trip.

How do I get Involved?

Two ways:

Apply Online

OR

Download an Application Pack

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