Staff Story: When I think about YouthWorks…

Today’s post comes to us from YouthWorks recruiting staff, Stephanie Hayes. Stephanie works full time at YouthWorks and is an all star. But long before she spent her time interviewing and hiring college students to work for us, Stephanie was a student on a YouthWorks trip, an adult leader on a YouthWorks trip and a summer staff. Her reflections here touch on every side of the YouthWorks experience – hers is truly a unique voice. To learn more about our recruiting team and the work Stephanie does with that team, check out this blog post from the fall: Meeting the Recruiting Team.

These are Stephanie’s words. 

 

 

When I think about my YouthWorks experience, it’s hard to start with my first summer on staff, because it really started in 2001, with a 17-hour drive from Tinley Park, IL to Manderson, SD.  As a teenager, my views of this country and what Jesus cared about were radically transformed by three YouthWorks trips, to Pine Ridge, SD, Cairo, IL and Juarez, Mexico.  It was common conversation fodder to dream about what it would be like to be on staff when we were old enough between me and my youth group friends.

 

When I was in college, I was invited to be an Adult Leader on a YouthWorks trip, back to Cairo, IL.  In that one week of leading teenagers, I was reminded of the impact YouthWorks had on me as a student.  The question begged to be answered: Why wasn’t I doing this all summer long?  So I applied the week the application became available that fall, and received my contract to be a Program Coordinator in the mail on Christmas Eve.  I spent my first summer of YouthWorks in Philadelphia.

 

That summer in Philly was everything I was hoping for and then some.  I was humbled to get up and share the talk each night in Club, I was overwhelmed by the incredible things our ministry partners and housing church were doing in the community, and I was blessed with one incredible staff team.  But even more than that, that summer was the hardest of my life; I learned so much about myself, about the way I treated people, or wielded by voice.  I also learned that being in the YouthWorks kitchen making dinner for 60 with just the help of 10 teenagers is maybe my favorite place to be.

 

 

 

While that first summer changed me for the better, it certainly didn’t stop there.  I continued to work for YouthWorks during the summers of college, then interned in the office.  The summer following my internship, I was hired to serve as a Site Director.  Now, in my 3 summers on staff at this point, I had always served in urban communities. While working on the Recruiting Team as an intern, I learned before most that I was being placed in Duluth for the summer.  But the week of our first Site Director training left us with an open spot and in what was certainly a not so subtle shove from God, I had the choice to say yes to heading back to the place my life was first changed – serving in Pine Ridge, South Dakota.

 

That summer as a Site Director was the hardest of all of my summers, but maybe also my favorite.  We lived in a town of 720 people, a number that was particularly close to my graduating class.  While working in Wanblee, I experienced what it felt like to be the minority and completely outside of my culture for the first time. That summer sparked in me a fascination and love for Native culture.  I also learned what it meant to lead that summer, I tried to support my team the best I could, but in truth they were the ones supporting me.

 

Since that summer, I have seen 11 more communities of YouthWorks as an Area Director, and I am surprised each summer that there is so much more to learn.  This has been a place where I have grown up and discovered who I am, and that discovery was made possible by the incredible people I met, by the supervisors who poured into me, and absolutely by the times when I realized that who I am is someone completely dependent on God.

 

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Although Stephanie is proud to be from Chicago land, she now lives in Minneapolis where she works as a Recruiting Associate at YouthWorks. She reads far more books than the average human being and enjoys cooking vegetarian dishes for friends and flying around the country via SouthWest air.