A story of collaboration between the GOVERNMENT, the POLICE and the CHURCH which led to hundreds of thousands of gospel exposures, thousands of changed lives and mobilized believers.
YOUTH AT THE THRESHOLD OF LIFE
In 1994 we got connected with the National AIDS-coordinator, Dr. Dénes Bánhegyi. He asked us to help prevent the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Hungary by putting together a program for educators and youth experts on how to deal with youth-problems. We told him that our conviction is that the only real solution for all of todays problem (drug, promiscuous sex, AIDS, alcohol, etc.) is a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. We shared with him that the program we put together has to be built on that conviction. Although he is not a Christian, he agreed with us in that and he opened an incredibly door for us. We developed a tool called "Youth at the Threshold of Life" to train educators on how to deal with youth-problems from a biblical point of view. As of today our curriculum is a three-volume, 1000 pages long teachers manual that deals with relationship and character building, AIDS- and drug-prevention. The curriculum has 57 classroom lectures, 27 reading assignments and 5 game-collections along with 5 videos and two other books From the educators point of view this is an effective educational program to help prevent risky behaviors. From our point of view it is an excellent tool to share the gospel with educators and students.
YTL now is accredited by the Ministry of Education and it is an official training program for educators.
Amazingly after 20 years and 23 nationwide symposium over 8,000 educators are reached and trained at the week-end long YTL symposiums. 80 percent of them are non-believers and the symposium is the first time when they hear a clear presentation of the gospel with an opportunity to receive Jesus Christ as their Savior and Lord.
What is most surprising is that these non-believer teachers are not just using the YTL curriculum but 75 percent of them are showing the Jesus film in their classrooms, too. Over 250,000 students in Hungary saw the Jesus video in their classrooms because of YTL.
YTL has been developed in Hungary and now it is used in 62 other countries of the World.