Youth & Kids leader design tool – Canva by Becky Lawrence
Youth & Kids leader design tool – Canva by Becky Lawrence, Youth and Kids Worker, St Mark’s MK 
A couple of years ago I came across Canva a free online cloud based design tool which has made my life as a youth and kids worker sooo much simpler. I use it to make social media posts, digital invites or flyers to activities, graduation certificates when my kids/youth move groups, YouTube thumbnails, podcast logos, WhatsApp group logos, website featured images and more. I also use it for everything on our Youthwork+ instagram and Facebook pages and our other publicity. I totally recommend it for any youth or kids leader or anyone in ministry!
I find it easy to use and quite intuitive too. You can upload all your own logos, imagery and even photos to use on the designs. You can also save any specific branding to your project or organisation into a brand kit, like fonts you usually use or colours etc. But there are also loads of templates, photos, backgrounds and elements already on there to use. It is worth applying for the free non profit pro version if you are a charity or a church – as this unlocks all the features and all the premium pro images and elements for free! There is a form to complete to do this where you have to explain how your charity benefits the community – and you have to prove you have charity status by attaching your charity registration doc or equivalent.
The other great thing about it is the sizing tool, you can easily create designs to the right specs for Instagram, an a4 poster, YouTube thumbnail, Instagram story or whatever you need, and if you need the same design to use on multiple platforms you can copy and resize super easily with just the click of a button!
With the pro version you can also create a team account, so if you have more than one person working on the same project or it’s useful to share branding and designs across the team. You can 
choose who you share designs with, the whole team or just certain people and make them editable or just viewable depending on people’s roles and needs.
All your designs can be downloaded in multiple formats as pdfs or pngs or other files for you to upload to social media, put on your website, send in WhatsApp or print yourself. There is also a feature to pay and have them printed if needed.
You can add video, music and all sorts of media too to make things for different platforms. You can also access Canva on your phone, tablet or computer thanks to its browser version or apple and android apps which make it really convenient for using anywhere even away from the office.
I love Canva and feel like it’s a really vital design tool for me in my youth and kids work and I hope you will too.
This post is not sponsored at all, i just really like Canva and recommend it as a youth or kids leader life hack to make your ministry easier and better!