SYM provides community education. In addition to hand-on learning through it's volunteer programs, SYM can provide a presentation for your community or church group on street youth and learning how to better love and serve them. SYM can deliver presentations adapted to elementary, junior high, high school, or adult age s. To schedule an education opportunity, please fill out our on-line form to request a speaking engagement. The service is free, although an honoraium or free will offering is encouraged as you are utilizing the limited resource of our missionary. We have a minimum group size of 20 to help make good use of that resoruce. If your group is not that large, please consider combining with others. Submit your request even if you're group isn't 20 in size so we can help you combine with other groups.
For children and youth, a 10 minute version is available that covers:
- Homeless people come in all shapes and ages
- Homeless people like to do the same things we do
- Homeless people are different in some ways on the outside
- We are all the same inside
This presentation can be given without any aids and just about anywhere. It has been adapted to all age groups from 1st grade, middle school, high school, and adult. The group is encouraged to create "manna bags" as a service project immediately after the presentation. This provides concrete learning for the students as well as a great help and encouragement for street youth.
The material for adults covers: - the background of our missionary, Terry Cole
- establishes who are street youth in Austin
- covers why this population has special needs
- explains how SYM works to meet these needs.
In addition, longer presentations can include: - interactive activities to help us identify how we see street youth
- interactive activities to help us identify the issues a youth may face,
- hints for how you can serve better on your own or through church and community groups
- interactive questions and answers.
The minimum time is 15 minutes. Longer presentations are 30 to 45 minutes. The group is encouraged to engage in a simple service project around the event (bring items of use, write encouraging notes, etc.). This helps cement what is learned about street youth and provides a great help to the street youth as well. FeedbackWe ask every group that we speak to to have at least 50% of the participants fill out our evaluation form. As a thank you, Instructions for making manna bags are given on the feedback page. Please provide your feedback after seeing one of our presentations here. | 
