Csenge Savanya
I accepted Jesus' calling in 2014 when I was 15 years old. I went to a summer camp where an American girl told me many things about Jesus that I had heard before but had never taken seriously. My English language skills were relatively poor back then. It was God's gift that I understood her because it took me 3-4 more years to acquire the vocabulary that would have been needed for that conversation. We prayed together, I invited Jesus to be the King of my life, and He kept blessing me by continuously proving what He had shown me that day. "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me” (Phil 4:13).
Any service I do strengthens my faith, thanks to God's grace. I have been involved in mostly missionary activities so far. I had the chance to go on a missionary trip to the Middle East, which was a milestone in my Christian identity development and career goals. I realised how much I like it when God uses me as the first impression of Christianity for someone. This person may be from another culture than mine or from a different background. I also had a turning point in my Christian walk when it was time to pick a university. I considered applying to a theology course because I thought it would be easier to discuss my beliefs if I had it as my "profession." I am glad that the Lord led me off this road. Today, as a master's student at a secular business university, I wholeheartedly speak about Jesus to my schoolmates.
I'm looking forward to our mentoring session! My biggest hope is to learn how to better engage the diverse range of speakers we have in the youth work community. Events like ELF have seen incredible success in building strong, lasting bonds among attendees, and I'm eager to understand the strategies. My ultimate goal is to create a similar impact for our event, fostering a sense of community while staying true to our faith-based mission. Beyond speaker management, I'm also interested in developing skills for crafting long-term event strategies. This would allow our event to create a lasting impact on the youth work community, going far beyond just the single weekend.
I am the coordinator of IVK (Youth Leader Conference), one of the biggest yearly conferences in our region that provides inspiration and professional support to youth workers from any Christian church, regardless of their denomination. In this role, I mentor and support our event manager to lead her volunteer team with love and compassion and organise a conference where youth workers can learn and develop in God's presence. I also work on constructing a volunteer management system where people can join our activity of supporting youth leaders all year long, not only for the IVK conference. In addition, during school breaks, I serve in foreign ministries and in summer camps of different churches.
Few non-ministry roles: I led several student associations, served as the coordinator of an international student exchange programs' training team, several intercultural learning conferences and training weekends for students, and built a team of students who created a career-related YouTube channel. I also have a family business focusing on horse-assisted leadership development, where we train corporate clients and leaders of Christian organisations.
We impact more than 300 leaders serving in youth ministry in Hungary. All our work is made possible by the donations and investments of private individuals who believe in developing youth leaders.