i am VERY excited about this free curriculum being offered through a partnership with ys, world vision, and fuller seminary’s center for youth and family. there’d been some talk a while back about replacing the free curriculum we offer with the one life program (new website there, btw), and kara powell at cyfm stepped up with a desire and a suggestion about how to get it done. she got funding from a grant, studied a bunch of “best practices” churches who seem to really get traction with involving teenagers in serving others, studied (with help from WV) issues surrounding AIDS in africa — particularly as it relates to orphans and widows, then developed this curriculum that is theologically grounded, research-based, and just plain kickin’ good.

kara’s one of the better curriculum writers out there in the youth ministry world as it is, imho — but for this project, she was able to dedicate a significant amount of time and other resources, which really, substantially, increases the quality.

of course, anyone can download this and use it. it is free, afterall. but we sure would hope that if you’re going to download it and use it, that you would consider involving your youth group in the one life program this year. my own middle school group will be involved for our third year, and i’m totally pumped to see what god will do this time around.