World View: Haiti

In late January 2010, Mark Oestreicher (former president of Youth Specialties and regular YWJ contributor) and Seth Barnes (founder and president of Adventures in Missions) put together a roving team of youth ministry bloggers. The team was dubbed YMATH, an acronym for Youth Ministry Advance Team: Haiti.

Marko wanted the team (which also included Anne Jackson, Jeremy Zach, Rhett Smith, Adam McLane, Tim Schmoyer and Clint Bokelman of AIM; videographer Ian Robertson; and me) to use social media to encourage youth ministries and churches to embrace mission-minded responses to the Haiti tragedy.

The concept behind the trip was pretty simple: Find youth workers who already had a wide influence in the social media world and unleash them to "tell stories" of people surviving after the deadly earthquakes Haiti. These leaders would engage their network of readers/followers to experience Haiti at the same time as they did and feel a connection that would move them to become involved in some way, as well.

Most of our team members never had been to Haiti before; and we only had about three weeks to reschedule our lives, get shots, pack and mentally prepare for the trip. Early on, the team experienced backlash as members told others that we were going to Haiti. Several prominent news organizations and churches said that if we weren't medical professionals then we shouldn't go. Explaining to people that we were going to tell stories and blog garnered negative responses, but as we began to explain more about sharing our stories and providing a voice, as well as preparing the way for other youth workers, more people began to see the value of the trip.

A New Reality in Missions

One area in which individuals involved in mission trips historically have struggled is the reentry experience. It's hard to share the stories afterward and recapture the experience during a short explanation in front of a congregation. With social media, a new paradigm has been created that is perfectly suited for missions. The experiences and stories can be told as they occur, which actively engages the congregation, friends and family while the team is physically still on the trip.

Adam McLane, social media guru for Youth Specialties, put the media strategy together. His philosophy was to "seed" the social media world with info, being careful not to over-saturate it. Before the trip, he created a Facebook page (Facebook.com/ymath) and started a Twitter account (Twitter.com/ymath) to provide a place for content from the teams to be posted in one place.

The Trip

On Feb. 11, 2010, the team boarded planes in San Diego, Orange County, Minneapolis, Nashville, Dallas and Atlanta. Although we had interacted much online before the trip, we all met in person for the first time on the plane heading to the Dominican Republic. Once we landed, we finally sat down to learn more about each other and hear about the final details of the trip.