Communications: what's involved

There have been some great stories from YWAM outreaches at past Olympics. We know God is going to do some amazing things at this Olympic outreach. There will be no shortage of stories to tell – and we want to tell them! Read on to see how we plan to do it.

During the Games

During the period of the Olympic Games and Paralympic Games, when the Olympic outreach will be at its busiest, we plan to hit our peak in our communications.

We will host an onsite media village at YWAM Harpenden. Here, a number of things will happen.

Each day:

• We will record and communicate stories from the outreach.
• Up to 20 teams comprising a journalist and photographer will be sent to London outreach venues.
• Up to 10 teams comprising three video people (including a producer/interviewer/editor – three roles in one) will be sent to London outreach venues.
• Each outreach team will include a photographer and story-recorder for each day, who will record their team’s news stories for the day.
• Each communications team and outreach team will hand over their stories and images to the Communications Team in the media village, where workers (photograph editors, journalists, sub-editors, video editors, graphic designers) will work on the files to produce stories to be sent out.
• We will collect the statistics from the app.
• The Communications Team will collect, collate, record and publish/podcast/video cast stories of the outreach within YWAM and to media outside YWAM.
• The Communications Team will capture/record any outside press/media coverage.
• The Communications Team will deal with communications emergencies and with immediate outside press/media demands.

After the Games

Although our focus is on having a Communications Team that produces during the Games, we will have a number of jobs to do post-Games. Again, anyone who wants to apply to be a part of this post-Games team is welcome to do so.

Among the post-Games tasks will be:

• Produce further stories of the London outreach to be circulated within YWAM and to media outside YWAM.
• Produce one final video covering all 19 days of the London outreach.
• Produce a one-page summary of the statistics from the London outreach.
• Collect and collate all the stories from the other Olympic outreach venues, and produce a video and one-page summary of the statistics for each of these too.
• Produce one definitive, combined video and statistics summary for the whole Forever outreach.
• Conduct ongoing and post-Olympic programme evaluations to see how effective the programme/outreach was.
• Create a fully functional and accessible library of the stories, photos, videos and outside coverage from the outreach.
• Produce a DVD of the whole Forever project to be handed over to the YWAM Brazil team coordinating the Olympic outreach in Rio in 2016.

Interested? Download the Individual Application Form HERE or Team Application Form HERE.