The Young Adult Transformation Collective connects, resources, and equips participating locally-led transformation programs.
YATC membership is open to residential young adult transformation programs. Collective members commit to living into the mission, values, and strategic intentions of the Collective; to centering antiracism praxis in their local programming, and to supporting of the Collective’s work in a meaningful way.
We are excited that future YATC partners, members, and participants have a diversity of spiritual beliefs. No specific spiritual belief is a requirement to be a partner, member, or participant. However, we do ask that everyone shows up with openness to discussion about how spirituality intersects with our daily work to transform ourselves and the world.
Benefits of membership include an annual pay-what-you-can professional development retreat for staff, shared recruitment efforts, and much more - click below to see the full list and to fill out a membership interest form.
Check out all the benefits of YATC membership and how to join!
(If you are not a residential young adult transformation program, and are interested in YATC, click here to see why we think partnership would be a great fit for you!)
Strategic Intentions:
We seek to root ourselves in deep reciprocal relationships with local partners that guide our work, rejecting Doctrine of Discovery-inspired models of mission.
We invite, challenge, demand that young adults move from understanding systemic oppression with their minds into feeling, sensing, noticing the impacts of oppression and opportunities for liberation in their hearts, spirits, bodies, and communities.
Participating programs equip young adults to enter the workforce with an orientation toward justice, antiracism, and collective liberation.
Service/volunteering operates as a learning laboratory - where participating young adults can implement their learnings and skills, make mistakes in a supportive environment, learn together, and discern their call for future vocations.
(What are these? Strategic Intentions are one way we work to flock together - agreeing on guiding principles for adapted implementation in each of our local contexts. What would each of these intentions look like in your local program?)
Current Collective Members
ABQ Young Adult Volunteer Program
Camp Hanover
Albuquerque, New Mexico
The ABQ Young Adult Volunteer program gives young adults the opportunity to experience New Mexico’s historic convergence of Native American, Hispanic and Anglo communities. Living in Albuquerque, YAVs encounter the beauty of the high desert and Sandia Mountains juxtaposed with the high levels of poverty and daily challenges faced by many New Mexicans. Volunteers work with a variety of local nonprofit organizations engaged in education, outreach and social justice, while also learning about and building relationships with diverse communities across New Mexico.
Hands and Feet of Asheville
Asheville, North Carolina
Hands and Feet of Asheville is a Young Adult Volunteer [YAV] site of the Presbyterian Church USA. Living in the shadows of the Appalachian mountains, YAVs in Asheville are invited to embrace a city of opposites. A city that thrives in providing for tourists, but has not equitably provided affordable housing or living wages for its residents. A city with an urban downtown setting, that is only minutes from the realities and cultures of rural western North Carolina and the poverty of the southern Appalachian region. A city that has long embraced the arts and provided safe haven for the free spirit and progressive ideologies, while simultaneously being nestled in the corner of a conservative state that does not mirror its priorities. Being a YAV in Asheville requires a willingness to be uncomfortable in the opposites, as well as the fortitude to navigate the in-between so that you may learn more about who you are and decide how you want to live in service of compassionate social justice, during the YAV year and throughout your life.
DC Young Adult Volunteer Program
Tucson Mennonite Voluntary Service
Washington, DC
The Washington, DC YAV site offers an opportunity to experience service and community life while living in the nation’s capital. The DC site focuses most of its placements on the intersection of housing, poverty, and racial justice. Volunteers will serve beside poor and low-income residents of DC—and will have the unique opportunity to engage issues such as poverty, hunger, and homelessness on the community organizing and policy level. YAVs will seek and give witness to God’s activity in the city, and in their lives, as they learn practices to sustain a lifetime of justice-seeking.
Tucson, Arizona
Build Community, Serve and Lead, Explore Faith and Vocation
Nestled between four mountain ranges and buzzing with the energy of a university city, Tucson offers enriching service opportunities with the enchanting Sonoran Desert as its backdrop. Tucson’s location, close to the Mexican border, and neighboring the land of the Tohono O’odham Nation, creates a unique opportunity to learn about issues surrounding both migrant and indigenous populations. Our location in the Sonoran Desert places creation care directly in our sights. A diverse population makes antiracism work vitally important. We invite you to join us, as we strive to build a community that works towards justice in the southwest.
Mechanicsville, VA
Part internship in outdoor ministry and part intentional community, Camp Hanover’s MVP program is an opportunity to learn the many aspects of year-round camp and conference ministry, vocational and spiritual discernment, and developing community. Be part of Camp Hanover’s mission while developing skills to help in your future.
August 2024- June 2025 (With option to extend for summer employment through August).
Are you associated with a transformation program that would like to be a part of YATC? Click here to find out more about membership!