Youth Street | YWAM Newcastle

You were made for this

Championing Young People

Youth Street is a community development project aimed at reaching young people. It was created to provide a safe place where young people feel valued and can learn to build healthy relationships while discovering their purpose. Youth Street is not a physical location, it is a community of young people involved in different programs that can be adapted to any and all locations using whatever resources you have. The vision of the program is to adopt, to accept, to love and to listen. YWAM Newcastle is living out this vision in many shapes and forms across the city.

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You were made for this

What We're Doing

Youth Street Newcastle has over 17 years of experience engaging with young people. On Saturdays, our entire campus revolves around them.

For years we have been taking youth out into Newcastle to skate, surf, dance, play sports and much more. We are dedicated to including, honouring and developing young people in dynamic ways and are committed to seeing our programs grow to reach a wider selection of our community.

We currently reach between 50 and 200 youth per week through our breakfast club, lunch-time groups and reading programs at a local high school as well as our Saturday Youth Street Teams program.

From small group mentoring to high school seminars, we are actively engaged with the youth of our city. In addition, we reach thousands more through our involvement in Surfest, Stand Tall, Red Frogs, Carols in the Park and other community events.

Each Saturday we open up our Warehouse to 10-17 year olds, inviting them in to participate in our Youth Street Teams program.

Each term we run weekly activity teams based around common interests which the youth can sign up for. For the next three hours we have the opportunity to connect with them, listen to their stories, and provide support and encouragement.

YWAM Newcastle was born out of a desire to see the youth of Newcastle impacted with God’s love.

The Hunter Valley and Central Coast regions have high rates of youth depression and suicide, family breakdown, abuse and addiction. Recognising this provoked a response, not only from YWAM Newcastle but also the wider church community, to begin consistent youth ministry in the city.

In 1992 the local churches and YWAM Newcastle partnered together to host a series of events across the city aiming to make God’s love personal to the youth of our region.

From there, YWAM Newcastle began actively reaching out through the use of bands and musicians, skate demos and other high school ministries. Seeing the wide variety of subcultures in our city, we chose to focus on the individual and develop programs around the skating, surfing, music and sports scenes.

In the early 2000’s we formally launched Youth Street and began working towards a youth precinct where young people could come, hang out and be part of a variety of activities that were relevant to their subculture.

Since this time we have been involved in a variety of activities and projects, including a local cafe and boutique, the birth of Youth Street Teams and hosting numerous bands and guests events such as surfers Bethany Hamilton and Derek Rabelo, who prove that physical impairments are no barrier for pursuing your dreams.