Young people participating in acts of kindness. Global Youth Day 2013 proved to be a blessing that exceeded our wildest expectations.
In September, 2012, the General Conference Youth Ministries Department consulted with the 13 Division youth directors, the GMEU, and the Israel field and received overwhelming support for experimenting with the concept of a “Global Youth Day.”
Sabbath, March 16, 2013 was chosen as it marked the beginning of the Youth Week of Prayer globally. Although some Divisions of the world field host their Yo
uth Week of Prayer at a different time of the year, they would still unite as one on that day for a common purpose. Just under 4 million were reached through social media campaign and we received over 10,000 video uploads from all over the world that portrayed our youth in action. Three live studio uplinks from Australia, Germany and the United States took those GYD to the rest of the world. GYD 2013 was such an overwhelming success that the global youth ministry team unanimously voted to make GYD a permanent feature of the youth ministry annual calendar of events. GYD 2014 involved 20 lives sites around the world for a 24-hour coverage. GYD 2015 will branch in new territories.