Bogota, Colombia – Five new young adults have been appointed to represent young people from their continental regions in Mennonite World Conference (MWC) on the Young AnaBaptists (YABs) Committee.

Makadunyiswe Doublejoy Ngulube (Zimbabwe), Ebenezer Mondez (Philippines), Jantine Huisman (Netherlands), Dominik Bergen Klassen (Paraguay), and Larissa Swartz (USA) will have their first meeting as the new YABs committee from 12-19 February 2016 alongside the MWC Executive Committee meeting in Indonesia.

The YABs Committee consists of five continental representatives chosen primarily from the most recent GYS delegates. The committee member terms start after the Global Youth Summit (GYS) 2015 and go until the next GYS in 2021 with the possibility of midway replacement due to relocation, study, family or work commitments.

The previous YABs committee, who finished their term after GYS 2015, consisted of Tigist Tesfaye Gelagle (Ethiopia), Sumana Basumata (India), Marc Pasqués (Spain), Rodrigo Pedroza García (Mexico), Lani Prunés (United States), and Ayub Omondi (Kenya) as the YABs mentor.

Tigist Gelagle will be transitioning to the role of YABs mentor, guiding the new committee as they begin their service. “I'm looking forward to work with the new YABs committee,” says Gelagle. She’s excited “to help them by sharing my YABs experience and also to support them in their work of the Kingdom of God by making the blueprint (the YABs guiding document) reality.”

The YABs committee represents the YABs Network, which includes all young people in Anabaptist churches. The committee works to strengthen Anabaptist identity among young people and to build and develop connections among youth and young adult groups in the global family through social media. The YABs committee will also plan GYS 2021 in Indonesia.

The YABs committee and network build on the work of an earlier MWC youth committee called AMIGOS, which worked from 2004 to 2009 and planned the 2009 Global Youth Summit. Based on this experience, a Youth Task Force was formed to develop a blueprint for formal youth involvement in MWC. This was adopted by the MWC Executive Committee in 2010 and the Youth Task Force was replaced by the first Young Anabaptist (YABs) Committee.

Click here to see the Blueprint for Young Anabaptist Network in MWC.

—MWC Release