The Young Adult Volunteer (YAV) program is an ecumenical, faith-based year of service for young people (ages 19–30) in sites across the United States and around the world. YAVs accompany local agencies working to address root causes of poverty and reconciliation. Alongside this work, volunteers explore the meaning of their Christian faith and accountability to their neighbors in community with peers and mentors.
Core Tenets of the YAV Program:
Every YAV site strives to embody the following values throughout the year of service:
Intentional Christian Community
YAVs explore what it means to be a Christian community with one another and their neighbors. While some will live in housing together and others spread throughout their country, all YAVs will reflect together on their service and explore their relationship with God, the church, and their ministry in a broken world.
Simple Living
YAVs are challenged to practice simple living – living an abundant life with less. Living simply pushes YAVs to evaluate their true needs with their lifestyle and beliefs. We challenge one another to live more simply in response to an unsustainable human demand for natural resources.
Cross-Cultural Mission
YAVs will intentionally explore the diversity of God’s creation, living and working outside of their comfort zone. YAVs will work to confront the systemic challenges of race, class, gender, and power, while learning to examine their own lives and actions.
Leadership Development through Faith in Action
YAVs develop their leadership by serving in communities that are actively being marginalized alongside local people of faith responding to poverty, violence, and injustice in their communities, sharing the gospel through word and deed.
Vocational Discernment
Through theological reflection and spiritual practices, YAVs will participate in the process of vocational discernment—unearthing God’s desires for each person’s life and work.
A Woman After God's Own Heart 