Who we are

YMT Australia is a national youth organisation that has been operating throughout Australia since 1986. YMT provides young people with a dynamic and relevant encounter with the Gospel, empowering them to make positive life choices.

Each team is comprised of young men and women who defer career or tertiary studies for 12 months to volunteer as full-time youth ministers in schools and parishes. The focus of YMT’s ministry is two-dimensional. The first dimension involves facilitating programs in high schools for Years 7 to 12. Further to this work in schools, YMT offers a range of follow up options including school holiday camps, conference days, youth group seminars and a mentoring program. YMT currently has teams based in Sydney, Perth and Melbourne and ministers to approximately 18,000 students every year.

Meet the 2024 Teams

YMT Melbourne

Meet the Melbourne Team!

YMT Perth

Meet the Perth Team!

YMT Sydney

Meet the Sydney Team!

YMT Australia Staff

Profiles

MISSION

STATEMENT

“To embrace a Christian, community lifestyle, bearing witness to the power and relevance of the Gospel to high school students, creating the context for each of them to encounter Jesus Christ.”

Locations

Ymt has teams located around Australia, including Sydney, Perth and Melbourne, with our national office located in Wollongong.

Val & Colin Sutton (Photo by Matthew Sutton)

Our Story

In October 1985 during a silent retreat, Colin Sutton sensed that the Lord was wanting to initiate a new model of youth ministry that would be founded in and through the Christian Community he was leading, the Disciples of Jesus Covenant Community. That day, a vision for an unprecedented model of youth ministry was born, that would play a vital role in the renewal of the Australian Church in the spirit of the New Evangelisation.

In January 1986, the very first Youth Mission Team was established in Sydney. As a remarkable indication of the source of that vision, YMT continues in the present day having come through extraordinary changes in both the Church and the Catholic education system but having maintained an exceptional integrity to the original blueprint mapped out by Colin all those years ago. The outcome of these first 32 years has been the faith conversion of thousands of young people across Australia.

Throughout the YMT journey, Colin demonstrated a tireless belief in the importance of this work and a deep love and concern for those comprising YMT. Through Colin’s legacy, this concern for the well-being of every individual remains one of the contemporary core values of YMT. In February 2016, Colin entered heaven from where we believe he continues to play a vital role in supporting the mission of YMT.

Our Alumni

About

It all started when…

Aenean eu justo sed elit dignissim aliquam. Suspendisse nec congue purus. Nulla eu pretium massa. Vivamus a ante congue, porta nunc nec, hendrerit turpis. Aenean eu justo sed elit dignissim aliquam. Mauris egestas at nibh nec finibus.