Even with an unprecedented year, a local youth ministry is excited about upcoming outreach opportunities taking place in Winnipeg.

Kristie Sidwall is the Senior Ministry Director of Masterworks Dance Studio and the Director and Founder of Surfacing Dance Studio. Both of these are apart of the Youth for Christ (YFC) ministry in Winnipeg. 

"Masterworks is our recreational program and Surfacing is our pre-professional program," says Sidwall. 

Surfacing is a two-year dance and theology program for young adults, while Masterworks has classes for students ages 3-18 who love to dance.

"It's been unique this year because [Surfacing] is a post-secondary program and it was allowed to continue in person."

With only five students in Surfacing, Sidwall says that it's been safe and good to have them continue on with the program in person. 

"We always end our year with an outreach. Typically we go up to The Pas. Unfortunately this year we will not be going. We felt in terms of safety it was best to stay where we are. But we are doing outreach with programming that is allowing us to join them."

The students will be working with a local school on one of their outreach events. 

"We have St. Aidan's School and we're going to be teaching our creative movement to their kindergarten kids. We're also working with their ages 6-8, teaching them a class. The Surfacing students have been working on these skills in pedagogy; specifically learning how to teach these age groups."

They are looking to teach a creative movement class to the NorWest Co-op Community in Winnipeg as well. 

"With The Meeting Place Church, we're going to be doing some action praise. The students have created some actions to go with worship songs and they'll be filmed so their kids church program can use them."

The Masterworks dance students typically go to the Dominican Republic every other year as a part of the program but due to COVID, they will not be going there either. 

"Our hope is to be doing a Zoom class or workshop with the Dominican Teams that are in leadership there that have carried on teaching dance in the Dominican," says Sidwall. 

YFC Winnipeg's annual Power of Hope radiothon will take place from April 6-8 on CHVN 95.1 FM. Watch for more stories like this and join us in praying for the ministry and the people they minister to.