The Team

Bonjour from Thunder Bay!

We are the staff for YouthWorks, Thunder Bay 2007! It's taken us some time to get this up and running, but here we are. Our goal is to update this weekly so you're in the loop and get a chance to see what we're up to!

So let's introduce the team:

Jen, our fearless leader and self-proclaimed morning person, is the organizational backbone of our team and by far one of our best cooks. She's from Langly, BC (near Vancouver) and has spent the past two years serving in Australia with Youth With A Mission (YWAM). This summer, she is Thunder Bay's Site Director, responsible for laying down the law and overseeing her lackees (the rest of us).

Steve is our Program Man who regales us weekly with stories of Zeek (please ask him about this one) and always has a dance-move on the back burner. The French connection for the summer, he is leading the rest of us in a bilingual attempt, making the American groups (who generaly speak no French) very impressed with our renditions of "Ou est Shannon" or "Est-ce que je peux aller au toilet?". Recently graduated from Redeemer University College, Steve originates from Russel, Ontario (near Ottawa).

Willem remains our social networker, connecting with the many ministry sites at which we serve as our Urban Staff. Always a funny man and never short of a humourously translated Dutch story, he works his social magic both with the team and with the youth. He's currently going into his third year at Redeemer and hoping to get a sociology/political science major -- rather fitting for what we're doing.

Shannon holds the hardest position of all: filling the cracks. Doing an amazing job of chaufferring, affirming, and orchastrating pranks, she has led us on escapades to the docks and ensures we're caffinated. As our Utility Staff, she provides the life experience and expertise of a former YouthWorks summer. Originally from Chattham, Ontario, she's spent the last year in Vancouver working in the YouthWorks office.

Rachel is our happy, caring, and always smiling Kids club staff. The Kids Club has not started yet, and will not start untill the 4th week. At that point Rachel will be running a daily kids club for any kids that want to come. Every week the youth will help her in running and preparing this program. Rachel is going into her 2nd year at the University of Victoria, there she is studying history hoping to go into teaching afterwards.

You may be wondering what we're doing here in the T-Bay. Together, we make up the team that welcomes 50-70 young people to Thunder Bay, and orchastrates the crews that go out into the community of Thunder Bay to work alongside already established service organizations. Our job is to provide meals, organize daily service projects (like working in nursing homes, sorting clothing donations, serving lunch at the soup kitchen downtown, etc), take them to evening events (like 5-pin bowling and Fort William Historical Village), and lead them in worship and teaching (we call it Club).

We trained in Denver for a week and then trecked towards the north of Ontario. Arriving safe and sound, sans Steve's guitar or the site box filled with last years gems of wisom, we began the two week process of prep. Grocery shopping, driving, meetings, flyers, paperwork, driving, and icecream made up our two weeks. Those two weeks flew by and we have just said goodbye to our first groups of 51 youth.