Frequently Asked Questions
Planning a Pre-Packaged YouthWorks Trip
Safety is of the utmost importance to our organization. We want participants to feel safe throughout the entire week, and we want parents and church leadership to know that we take every precaution in order to ensure their safety. Our staff are thoroughly trained on a variety of safety practices and procedures. With that said, we do rely on Adult Leaders and youth to help the YouthWorks staff in upholding and following the safety policies and procedures for their mission week.
YouthWorks Pre-Packaged trips are affordable. Many Pre-Packaged trips start at $479 per person. Cost varies by location and can be found on each trip’s page. For a complete list of trips, see the Trip Finder and browse via list or map view. Cost per participant includes:
- 14 Meals, Plus Snacks
- 24+ Service Hours, Including Project Materials
- Daily Thematic Programming
- Community Activities
- Lodging
- Community Hosts (Staff) – Recruitment & Training
If cost of the trip is an obstacle for your group or for a specific student in your group please call us to find out more about scholarship opportunities.
Our Pre-Packaged trips run weekly in June and July, with groups arriving on Sunday evening and leaving on Friday morning. We encourage you to extend your trip on the front or back end to accommodate for any sightseeing or recreational activities that you would like to do with your group.
We do offer fall, winter, and spring trips that are customizable. Check out this page for more information.
Registrations for a YouthWorks mission trip must be made through a church or organization. The minimum group size is five. Registered groups can add spaces to their group at any time as long as we have availability. There are some deadlines for decreasing spaces. Please check out the Registration Process for more specifics.
Because of YouthWorks’ program and policies, agreements with ministry partners, and to be respectful of other groups, we do not allow individuals who are not in the appropriate grades to attend the mission trip. Each YouthWorks trip is categorized as middle school (junior high), mixed (middle school and high school), high school, or high school and up.
- 2027 Middle School trips are open to students who complete 6th grade in spring 2027 through students who complete 8th grade in spring 2027.
- 2027 High School trips are open to students who complete 8th grade in spring 2027 through seniors who graduate in spring 2027.
- 2027 Mixed trips are open to students who complete 6th grade in spring 2027 through seniors who graduate in spring 2027.
Adult Leaders play a key leadership role on your youth trips. Leaders need to be at least 20 years of age and willing to take a role of leadership with your teenagers. If you have a leader that is younger than 20 years old but works very closely with your program please call us to discuss options.
You must bring, at minimum, 2 Adult Leaders (including the Trip Leader). Whether you need more than 2 Adult Leaders is based on your group size:
- High School Students: 1 Adult Leader for every 7 students
- Middle School Students and Mixed Groups: 1 Adult Leader for every 5 students
- If both male and female students are present, you are required to have at least one male and one female Adult Leader in your group.
YouthWorks welcomes youth and adult participants with disabilities and works collaboratively with Trip Leaders to provide accommodations when applicable. While we are working toward greater accessibility in each of the communities we serve, there are some mission locations that are more easily equipped to handle special requests than others and some communities that cannot fully accommodate all needs. To talk through your group’s specific needs, reach out to us to schedule a call.
Yes. Each group must conduct a national (multi-site) criminal background check and sex offender registry check on any participant (adult or student) that is 18 years and older. Groups then provide YouthWorks with written confirmation that every participant 18 and older has been approved to work with youth and children and are deemed safe.
For more on this, registered Trip Leaders can check out the Background Check FAQs on Go.YouthWorks.Com.
During the Trip
Groups are housed in a local church, school, or community building. Participants need to bring their own sleeping bags, pillows, and sleeping pads or air mattresses that are twin-size or smaller (Puerto Rico has a slightly different requirement). All females and males sleep in separate rooms, including married Adult Leaders. Showers are available either on site or at a nearby location. Off-site showers may be at local community center, YMCA, or public high school which may include open shower rooms or private stalls. Specific details will be available in the spring as they are confirmed in each community.
A typical YouthWorks site has capacity for up to 65 participants, so there likely will be multiple groups on site during your week. The only way to be 100% certain that your group is the only group on site for a Pre-Packaged trip is to register for the whole week (all the spaces on site).
If you are a small group who wants to experience a YouthWorks trip with just your group, a Custom trip might be a better fit. Learn more about Custom trips here.
Each group is responsible for transportation to the mission trip community and throughout the trip. The vehicles you use during your trip need to have enough seat belts for each person in your group. During the day, you may be at one place all day or serve at one place in the morning and a different place in the afternoon. You will be given addresses to and from each location, back to the housing site, and, when appropriate, to emergency facilities.
On Pre-Packaged YouthWorks mission trips, you will also be responsible for the transportation of youth and leaders from other groups to service sites and Community Activities.
Bus accessible communities can accommodate groups traveling on buses. Buses are defined as any vehicle larger than a standard 15-passenger van. We do not allow buses at all of our sites because of safety, the needs of the community, and the problem of parking. Even if a site is designated as bus accessible, we still require that you provide additional transportation for participants during the week.
Service
We go in to communities by invitation only and stay invested with individuals, churches, schools, and service organizations permanently planted in these communities for the long run (for decades!). We partner with these organizations by providing volunteers. Our partnerships include working with the elderly, children, individuals with special needs, people experiencing homelessness or who are in transition, and more. We also partner through hands-on labor with food banks, community gardens, or neighborhood revitalization projects. While we place a priority on relational service ministry opportunities, we are also pleased to serve behind the scenes through manual labor; many YouthWorks participants will experience a little of both.
We work with community members to choose appropriate service opportunities for our participants. Trip Leaders place each person from their group on a crew to serve together throughout the day at each service location.
If your group is larger than seven people you will most likely be split into multiple crews for service. Each crew is made up of 7-10 people, including 1-3 Adult Leaders, depending on the needs of our service partners and the size of your group. Oftentimes crews are made up of more than 1 church group.
It depends on the YouthWorks site. We seek to meet the needs of our community partners and their ministries. Some of our organizations prefer the same volunteers to come back each day. In other situations, you might serve with multiple partners during your trip.
You will not know specifically where you will be serving until Sunday night of your trip.
Once groups arrive in the community, Adult Leaders receive written information about the service sites. Before heading to service sites for the first time, on-site Community Hosts will give each crew additional helpful information about assigned service sites.
In some communities we serve through what we call “work projects.” Work Projects are a tangible way for groups to serve a community through painting, yard work, community beautification, building cleanup, and other simple hands-on projects. We find and establish partnerships with homeowners through trusted local leaders and reputable organizations in each community. These connections are often made by networking in the community and partnering with local churches, service organizations and community members to find people we can work alongside of in home repair and landscaping projects. Our goal for Work Projects is to create a meaningful work experience where youth can make a difference with their skills and abilities.
We work with community members to choose appropriate service opportunities for our participants. Trip Leaders place each person from their group on a crew to serve together throughout the day at each service location.
Primarily, we seek to do projects that are at, not above, teenagers’ skill level, so students are able to step into leadership of those projects. Occasionally, however, there is need for skilled labor in the community.
Registered Trip Leaders receive the contact information for their on-site staff team in the weeks leading up to their trip. If you are a registered Trip Leader with someone with specialized skills in your group, reach out to the on-site staff team via email to let them know.
We cannot guarantee we will have projects that require those special skills, but it is helpful to know what skills are available as we are considering how to best serve the community.
We love to partner with organizations that have a faith-based focus, but we also value what other non-profit organizations are doing in our communities. Our hope is to provide volunteer support to local organizations (service partners) that share our desire to love and serve the people of the community. YouthWorks does not endorse its partners beyond providing volunteer support, so participants will not be asked to distribute fliers or solicit gifts or donations for any of our local partners.
We certainly want to be able to share God’s truth and love with the people in our communities; however, some of them have seen a great deal of aggressive Christian evangelism, and many of our ministry partners rely on government funding that limits traditional evangelism. It is because of this that while we encourage participants to be open about their reasons for serving, as well as in sharing their faith, we believe that this sharing is most meaningful when done primarily through actions and within the context of relationships.