Website:
Student population - 835.000
Cities with university students - Groningen, Nijmegen, Maastricht, Tilburg, Eindhoven, Wageningen, Utrecht, Leiden, Delft, Den Haag, Amsterdam, Rotterdam
Cities with staff teams - At the moment we don’t work in staff teams. We have one staff living and working in Groningen, all the others travel to the cities they are working in. In every city we try to let students lead. (It seems to help that we are at a distance.)
Cities that have a student-led movements and are coached by staff (they visit once a week/every other week) are Nijmegen, Tilburg, Wageningen, Utrecht, Leiden, Delft, Den Haag, Amsterdam, Rotterdam.
Number of staff in SLM- 5 staff
Religion/Faith statistics -
55% non-religious, 20% Catholic, 14,5% Christian, 5,5% Moslim, 5% other
StudentLife in the Netherlands work with student leaders who lead local movements. These students are coached and supported by staff. The studentleaders for example lead weekly outreaches, prayer meetings and community activities. Since a lot of christian students are part of an associations where they have their own community and bible study groups, we don’t see the need to (primarily) offer bible studies etc.
Many students do not believe in God at all. Some doubt about it, but just a small part is already really interested in if there is a God or not. Christian students can use some help with reaching out since they feel often hesitated sharing that they are a christian or sharing about their faith. When they come at a point where they feel more relaxed to share, they often see that it is actually not so scary and even may notice interest in the hearts of their friends/classmates.
Receiving Needs
Describe your need for receiving labourers and/or teams, both short and long term.
Short term team for projects or specific tasks:
Assisting in finding christian students at the universities (September/October)
Assisting in reaching out to find interested students who can be invited for open communities
Long term team to serve in your country:
Individuals are welcome to become a citycoach (staff that coaches and supports studentleaders). Possible city locations are currently Amsterdam, Maastricht, Wageningen. (We could discuss even different cities)
Sending Opportunities
What sending is happening right now from your country? (Short term, long term, etc)
We send a short term team to Belgium to see if we could do anything to help students reach out (Leuven)
What are your dreams and vision for sending in within the next two years?
The Netherlands would love to send short term teams to Belgium to help them set up student ministry
The Netherlands could join other countries in projects (whenever the team speaks English)