Youth With A Mission (YWAM) encompasses thousands of people and hundreds of ministries in almost every country of the world. In every case, our passion is to know God and to make Him known.
We are a mixture of people from all over the world, from 149 countries in fact. In many of our locations, people from a wide variety of nations serve side by side. We come from numerous different Christian denominations and speak hundreds of languages. Nearly half of our staff come from “non-western” countries, such as Brazil, Korea, Indonesia, India and Nepal.
In addition to our full-time staff, many YWAM locations host short-term outreach teams made up of individuals, youth groups, families and churches who get to participate first-hand in “making God known” through both words and actions. We send out over 25,000 short-term missionaries each year. There are three strands of ministry weaving throughout all that YWAM does:

Evangelism
Mercy Ministry
Training and Discipleship

Although we have main offices, we do not have an international administrative headquarters.
Therefore each YWAM location is responsible for planning outreaches, initiating training programs, recruiting staff, financial resource development, and setting priorities in carrying out ministry.
With all the freedom and independence allowed each location, the question often arises: What does every YWAM location have in common?
Some of the common denominators found at YWAM locations are:

• The pre-requisite of the Discipleship Training School.
• The mandate to “know God and make Him known” (Is. 6:8; Matt. 28:18-20; Col. 1:10).
• A three fold ministry of: evangelism (Rom. 10:14-15), mercy ministry (Matt. 5, Eph. 2:10) and training/discipleship (Mark 16:15).
• A shared statement of faith, vision and values.