Not for profit organizations form a significant portion of On Demand HR’s members. We recently sat down with the CEO of Young Life Australia, Glyn Henman, to learn more about their mission. What they do, who they help, and how our audience can help to support their worthwhile cause in helping younger Australians form meaningful bonds with adults.

Tell us your name, position and the organization that you are responsible for. Yeah, thanksClint, It’s good to be with you. And just to encourage you guys in the bits that you’re doing as well. Glyn Henman, the CEO for Young Life Australia, and have been involved for many, many years and just loved the work that we’re involved with

. And, you know, I enjoy the stuff that we do with young people in particular. Tell us a bit about your organization’s mission. What is it the young life is striving to achieve? Well, our mission is to build confidence, values and resilience in Australia’s young people through significant relationships with adults in model of the love of Jesus Christ

. And essentially what that means is that, you know, we want to enter the world of young people a little bit. And we understand that, you know, the world of young people is a confusing place, a difficult place at times.

And I just need someone who can be alisteningear, to engage with them at that point of need and just really care for them appropriately. Again, we are a faith based mission, clearly. So we have a bent around that stuff.

At the end of the day, we’re really committed to working with all young people, irrespective of who they are, where they’re from and what their socio economic standards is or whatever that is. We just want to be caring for young people.

Yeah, it’s fantastic. Really appreciate you giving us that that rundown on what Young Life does. Tell us, like in practical terms. So what sort of activities and programs does Young Life effectively carry out to achieve what you’ve just outlined?

Basically, we have a couple of core programs. You know, we have what we call that Volunteers in Schools program, which is where we engage with the local public school, in particular high schools, is sort of the key focus.

And we want to put volunteers so we engage a team of volunteers to go and serve a school community. So a lot of Christian groups like, again, you know, the old faith based groups. They want to come in and, you know, this is who we are.

You need to believe this stuff. That’s not what Young Life is doing in that space. Our whole thing is just about caring for and modeling young people and just just being a part of their world, entering their world, because they’re not going to come to us all of the time.

Well, they struggle to come to adults. And so it’s about building trust and confidence in that space. And then as we do that, we then run what we call our club program. So if you think about, I don’t know, the old youth group on a Friday night type thing similar to that idea, that’s an open invitation to

all young people, irrespective of where they stand in the community. So we do that. We also then run a support group for young people if they need additional support or encouragement. So generally, do that in small groups of four or five young people at a time just to be talking through life’s issues, because, you know, we all

have stuff that we’re all dealing with the different points. And so, again, young people can opt in and out of that stuff. And then we also have a pretty extensive camping program. And we do one camp in the year in particular, which is sort of our benchmark camp, which is set in Jindabyne each January.

And it’s a week, but it’s 300 people. Everyone climbs Kosciosko, goes water skiing, mountain biking, abseiling, Rock climbing, you name it, we do it. It’s a full onweek. We call it a camp, but really it’s a resort.

So it’s a lot of fun. So so there’s sort of the key programs that we run with young people across the year. That’s brilliant. I mean, and thanks so much for taking us through that. That was really great stuff.

And and, you know, it just sounds like you’re so committed to the cause. And and tell me, like as as a person in the community, an ordinary person in the community, what’s the best way people can support Young Life? What’s the best thing to do to help the organization?

I mean, I think there’s there’s a number of things. Like all not for profits, you know, people volunteering, I think, and bringing their expertize to the table, I think is is one thing that people can do. I mean, I think that volunteer space is really critical.

And, these days we think about volunteering or the old model of volunteering is you’ve got to turn up at this time and this place Yes, is that is still part of what we do. But certainly, knowledge is is a big contributor into the world these days.

And and helping organizations, particularly not for profits, engage in that knowledge community as well in terms of collecting data and understanding your data, using that information to actually engage people to serve them well, I think is really critical.

I mean, and then clearly there’s nothing. We run on the smell of an oily rag. So all gifts given in terms of money are always appreciated as well, no matter how that comes, I think for all not for profits.

It’s sort of these. Is fund raising a challenging environment in an organization like Young Life? Is that something that, you know, you guys do quite well? I’m curious about that. Yeah. I mean, it’s always a challenge. And it doesn’t matter how big or how small your organization is.

It is a tremendous challenge. And, you know, organizations spend a lot of money. You know large organizations spend a lot of money on fundraising. And we’ve sort of chosen not to choose that high end, expensive fundraising model, you know, getting on phones, you just calling people who don’t know us

or whatever. Our model is very much a community model to just, you know, raising funds in a local community, you know, asking the moms and dads to give 20, 30, 40, 50 bucks a month type thing. That’s that’s sort of the bread and butter of our organization is people who give it that level.

We do events. We do Bunnings barbecues, we do trivia nights, but we do all the stuff that everybody else does. And I think it’s really important to be communicating your message that way. You also have a couple of corporate sponsors who

they put the cream on the cake. Really? But you cake is still yet your average person in your community who just sees what you do and says I believe in that. And I want to make a contribution to that.