Frequently Asked Questions - SMILE

We have SMILE placements in many African countries including The Gambia, Kenya, Uganda, South Africa, Morocco, Togo and Tanzania. We also have volunteers in various Asian countries and European countries too. We hope to begin sending SMILERS to South America in the near future. However, locations do change and we’re always seeking to add opportunities. Crosslinks itself operates in many countries worldwide - too many to list.

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This is a natural part of going abroad!  We’ll try and help prepare you as much as we can, but part of the joy and challenge of short term mission placements is to experience very different cultures and people. We ask you to be sensitive and loving to those around you, acknowledging that Christians in other countries may well have different views to you on what constitutes godly and acceptable behavior.

Crosslinks is keen that our placements help serve the local church wherever possible, and we believe that the local church is the key to mission. The practicalities of this relationship will be determined by your hosts and yourselves when you arrive.

Our placements often involve some kind of teaching, although they are certainly not restricted to this. We don’t generally ask for professional qualifications, but for some opportunities, something like TEFL would be useful. Anyone with ministry experience and perhaps theological education could be very useful.

Our projects often involve supporting long term missionaries, so it’s really a question of what the mission partners are involved in. We don’t tend to undertake building or agricultural projects, and placements of a medical nature are reasonably rare. SMILERS with relevant professional skills can sometimes be greatly used.

The first step is to contact us with an enquiry. We can then send you an application form to fill in. Once we receive this, we will take up references. You will need to attend an interview or a selection day, and be subject to a CRB check. You will also need to obtain “clearance to travel” from our independent health agency.

Orientation is an important pre-departure element, and its length and breadth will vary dependent on the duration of your trip, but will be between half a day to five days. We’ll cover areas such as: 'The Biblical Foundation of Mission', 'Gospel and Culture', 'What is the Gospel?', 'Other Religions', 'How to Share Your Faith', 'Maintaining Your Spiritual Life', health, brief language training, how to teach and several other areas.

Debriefing is an essential part of the end of the SMILERS' placement. It provides a time of reflection, discussion and prayer as we talk about the experiences, emotions and plans of the SMILER. The length of debriefing will vary from individual to individual. For our Gap Teams, we usually run a debriefing day after their return from overseas.

We organise flights, insurance, health checks and advice (including what jabs you will need - but you have to pay for them), orientation and debriefing. Whilst you should organise your personal prayer support, we will put your prayer requests on our website and commit to praying for you regularly. We ensure that you are placed somewhere where there is pastoral support from your hosts and there is always someone here in the UK to contact if things are not going well.

Supervision is by the hosts (usually long-term mission partners) who will keep an eye on the volunteers, but it will not be constant surveillance!  Our short termers generally need to be self-starters, flexible and willing to get stuck in.

Crosslinks

This depends on your age. If you are just 18 and your parents are dead set against the idea then we’ll have to see, though we will try to explain what happens on a SMILE placement, and we’ll introduce ourselves and try to calm any fears or prejudices that they may have. However, in the end if it is going to be a huge issue and a bad witness then we would recommend the volunteer does not go. If they have left home and are, say, 25 and self-supporting, then that is a family issue and not something we want to get involved in.

It isn’t a holiday, but it certainly should be fun! There will be times when it will feel like hard work, since our volunteers do go out to be useful, but our experience is that they do have a lot of fun time at the same time. Generally, SMILERS will have a holiday scheduled into their time away.