Youth with a Mission (YWAM) www.ywam.org

I did my DTS in 2001, and and experienced cult-like manipulation and spirituality abusive leadership. I paid $4,000 to be manipulated and abused and over 20 years later I’m still dealing with the trauma and PTSD I experienced there. It’s time to expose YWAM for what it is: a destructive authoritarian organization that is doing more harm than good. Highly recommended to stay away if you value your mental and spiritual health.

Youth with a Mission, YWAM for short, is an interdenominational organisation and its focus is on using your Gap Year to be involved in world wide missions. The focus of this organisation is Christian and so might not be to everyone's liking.YWAM offers a variety of courses and the main one is the so called DTS (Discipleship Training School) which it runs in pretty much every country and often in many different places within each country. I did mine in Brisbane, Australia and as part of the DTS program also went to Papua New Guinea.A DTS is 6 months long and is split up in 3 months of teaching on worldview and community issues and 3 months of outreach. A DTS always has a specific nature and mine was a Beach 2 Bush DTS, which involved more travel and backpacking. We travelled through the outback a bit and various Islands such as Fraser and Stradbroke Island. Other DTS focuses around the world are Surf, Sport, Arts, Music, Drama, Football or anything else really, there is a lot of different ones available.I loved the 6 months with YWAM and have learned a lot from it. We did 6 weeks of volunteering in Australia and 6 weeks in Papua New Guinea. The latter was pretty heavy and involved jungle trekking and visiting remote villages; looking back a very worthwhile experience!The only negative point about YWAM is that each base is managed and led by different teams of volunteers, which have a lot of independent freedom. Friends of mine have had negative experiences with this and my recommendation is therefor to always do some research when picking which base you would like to go to. I've made friends for life during DTS and actually met my wife on this course. This experience changed my life and if you are looking for a new challenge then I'd encourage you to have a look at this.