MYA Home

What is MYA?

   Methodist Youth Activities [MYA] is a grant-making trust that was set up
    with the aim of nurturing and educating young people and, by grant aid,
    helping them take advantage of opportunities that will help the formation
    of their lives.

    We cover the age range 11 to 25.

    And we are registered with the Charity Commission to operate within the
    United Kingdom.



The Objects of Methodist Youth Activities are:

To help young people to develop their physical, mental and spiritual capacities so that they may grow to full maturity as individuals, and their condition of life may be improved.

And to awaken, or strengthen, in them their desire for a full and active Christian life.

What does MYA do?

MYA started making grants to individual young people in 1995. In any year, about 25 young people can receive a grant as low as £25 and occasionally as high as £400 or £500 – as funds allow.

We are also interested in the work of young people’s organizations that are working with similar aims to MYA. The budgets of most projects of this type would be well beyond the means of MYA. So we would expect to contribute a proportion of the applicant’s budget. We are willing to consider applications for funding up to a maximum of 3 years. Depending on the availability of funds, our largest grants to projects would be in the region of £2,500 per year. In any year we are helping with grants about 15 projects.

Who is involved?

MYA has a membership of interested people who elect the nine trustees. It is the trustees who run the charity and decide upon grants. They meet twice a year, in November and June, to allocate grants. They will only consider applications that satisfy both the objects of MYA. Anyone who is interested can apply for membership. We would particularly encourage people who have received a grant from us to become members. Please contact the secretary who will be happy to give you more information.

How did MYA begin?

After the end of the Second World War, as the Methodist Church's youth work expanded and the Methodist Association of Youth Clubs was established, some Ministers and Youth Club leaders in the Methodist Church started to take groups of young people camping for weekends or summer holiday weeks. These times of spiritual nurture, physical activity, and close friendship became recognized as being intensely valuable for the young participants. Many of them began their Christian discipleship at camp or as a direct result of it.

At the same time the East Anglia District of the Methodist Church established a permanent campsite at Mundesley, on the North Norfolk coast. In the 1960's, at the height of popularity for this work, a group of enthusiasts for these camps concentrated their work at Mundesley. They formed a charity named Methodist Youth Camps, and secured property and land, available for hire, to be used by youth groups. For some time this was managed as a youth project of the East Anglia District of the Methodist Church. It was also available to school groups, and some LEA's booked it for residential field studies.

In 1981 Methodist Youth Camps became a company limited by guarantee called Methodist Youth Holidays Ltd, and continued its Christian work with young people. But by 1990 the LEA schools groups were dwindling. In the face of declining business, the Trustees sold the property and relaunched under the name Methodist Youth Activities Ltd as a grant-making Trust, using the income from the invested proceeds of sale of Mundesley. Since we started grant-making in 1995, we have funded 196 young people and 130 projects. [Sept 2008]

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