About Us
The Vision
We love youth and kids work. We love seeing children and youth transformed by positive role models, growing and learning in Christian communities and understanding how profoundly loved and accepted they are. This work doesn’t happen without leaders, adults who step forward into vocational roles or volunteer roles, who are willing to serve.
We’re here to provide vital support and to cheer on all the youth and kids leaders doing this work at churches and charities in Milton Keynes and beyond.
We’ve been involved in youth and children’s work for decades and we hope some of the things we’ve learnt along the way will be useful for others.
From our own experience youth and kids work can be hard, it can be a struggle to know how to begin from scratch, can be draining, lonely or lacking support, it can be tough to keep coming up with fresh ideas, hard to know where to go for decent resources, tricky to find useful accessible training, challenging to gather volunteers and build a team, confusing to know how to cover some of the tricker topics, and sometimes we might feel no one really ‘gets’ it. This is what we’re here for.
We know we’ve really thrived when we feel connected & encouraged, and it gives confidence when we have a place to go to when we need to bounce ideas or ask questions. We want to be that shoulder to lean on. To help youth and kids leaders keep going and thrive doing so.
Youthwork+ seeks to inspire and support leaders at churches and Christian ministries so that they are equipped and released to see more young people’s lives transformed and hopefully more young people finding a home within supportive church communities.
Our vision is for kids and youth leaders to feel valued, supported, equipped and encouraged. We come alongside churches and help strengthen existing teams, youth and kids work, or help launch youth & kids work from scratch.
The History
In January 2020, Becky Lawrence and Bex Jignasu, as well as sharing the same first name and youthful looks, officially kicked off with Youthwork+. We were joined in November 2020 by Olly Shaw who began volunteering.
We’ve built a team of trustees too – who all input into the work. We’re all super passionate about youth and children’s work, especially work which is accessible & relevant to the 95% of children and young people who are not currently connected to churches.
We have decades of experience leading a bunch of different youth and kids work in lots of different contexts including small & big churches, rural & city, charities & schools where we’ve been involved in schools work, discipleship, outreach and more! We’ve also done a lot of the behind the scenes stuff too along the way including writing policies, managing safeguarding, creating strategies & visions, recruiting & leading teams of staff & volunteers, fundraising, receiving coaching, coaching & mentoring others, leading networks, and more. We can get alongside you at any stage and offer encouragement, help and advice for children’s, youth or family ministry.
I am so thrilled about the work and ministry of Youthwork+. Since they formed, I have felt part of something bigger as a youth worker. I appreciated how they have reached out to us youth workers and have made it a focus to check on our wellbeing and they also offer some input and resources...often youth work and children’s work can feel isolating – but they are good at ‘joining the dots’ – bringing the right people together.”
- Darrel, Youth Worker
Founder & Director
Becky Lawrence
Becky grew up in Luton and had her life transformed when she decided to follow God at age 19 at a Youth weekend away with a church youth group. Shortly after her adventure into youth work began as a volunteer on a gap year with her church in 2004. Followed by 6 month placements shadowing the youth worker at Oasis Church Waterloo, London, and serving as a volunteer at 24-7 Prayer Boiler Room at Moorgate, London. She then completed a Genetik Urban Youth Evangelism internship for 6 months at The Message (Evangelistic youth charity) in Manchester, which involved lots of youth work placements including a mobile youth bus, detached work with an Eden team, community outreach events and a church drop in youth club as well as weekly theology seminars.
Becky began paid youth work in 2006, at Stopsley Baptist Church in Luton, as Community Youth Worker, where she gained experience over 8 years of church based, community youth work and schools work. She also volunteered in school and on summer camps with Luton Churches Education Trust (now Youthscape). She was a volunteer mentor for several young people via GreenHouse Mentoring for 9 years, led a weekly detached youth work team as a Youth Chaplain with Luton Town Centre Chaplaincy, and led & organised 6 short term mission trips to take young people to The Philippines with International Teams. She also had the privilege of being the Chair of Luton Unite, successfully relaunching it to befriend & bring together youth leaders from across the town to co-host youth events and offer peer support via a leaders network.
In 2014 she moved to Milton Keynes to lead the secondary schools work at Bridgebuilder Trust, where she worked for 5.5 years & built a team of secondary schools workers & doubled the number of secondary schools visited, as well as increasing the secondary schools work offering including the design & implementation of a Prayer Spaces project. Through this role she served on the core planning team of city wide ecumenical October half term social action youth event Hope MK for 6 years, and was the Chair for 3, which helped her build relationships with lots of churches and youth leaders.
More recently Becky was the Youth & Children's Worker at St Mark's MK part time from 2019 to 2022, which included launching a youth group and writing all the material for kids church, as well as inputting into intergenerational ministry. Currently Becky works part time for St Marks MK as Chief Operations Officer overseeing all the behind the scenes logistics & processes (including finance, book keeping, fundraising and HR) of the church, charity and a child poverty project called St Mark's Meals which delivers meal kits via over 145 local school, nursery and community partners, as well as being part time founder and Director of Youthwork+ and a mummy to her little girl!
Becky had the idea for Youthwork+ back in early 2019 born out of a 16 year passion for youth work and a huge desire to provide much needed support for those doing it. In January 2020, Becky started Youthwork+ by hosting networking with local youth leaders. Becky hosts our networks, delivers training, mentors & connects with leaders, hosts and edits our Youthwork+ Podcast, manages church donors, oversees communications, updates our website and more recently also creates our Social Media Content!
Chair of Trustees & Volunteer
Bex Jignasu
Bex has been involved in youth work since 1998, firstly as a volunteer youth worker at St Luke’s church in Thurnby, Leicestershire. After leaving secular employment in 2003 she became the paid youth worker for St Luke’s church for 3 years. In 2006 she joined Scripture Union and has worked for them ever since (!) helping coordinate work with over 60 local mission partners. Mission Partners include local trusts doing schools work and youth work across England and Wales who are formally affiliated with Scripture Union. She served on the Core Team of Hope MK helping to plan and deliver the city wide annual youth event for two years, and also led a community project at Hope MK too.
Bex currently volunteers with youth and children’s work at her church, Loughton Baptist and is involved in pioneering creative outreach with children, youth and families in the church community. Bex joined Becky to help launch Youthwork+ in January 2020 and was pivotal in helping us complete our charity registration paperwork. Bex is involved in our Youthwork+ consultancy work, helps deliver training and has helped a few local churches already to launch new youth and children’s work in their communities. She is also our Chair of Trustees.
Trustee and Volunteer
Olly Shaw
Olly has been involved in helping lead Christian youth work, since he was 15 years old. He was the lead youth worker at two youth centres, worked as a befriender for Autism Family Support for three years, has been involved in schools work over 5 years and volunteered with a few Christian youth work charities and organisations.
For a brief period in 2016-2017 he worked as a full time Computer Officer for Oxford University, which as well as providing a break from employed youth ministry gave him fresh perspective of the importance and challenges of volunteer youth ministry.
More recently he was the Youth Worker at St. Leonard’s Church in a village called Eynsham in Oxfordshire (where he has been working in one capacity or another since 2006) and also worked part time as a Pioneer Youth Minister for the Diocese of Oxford, supporting churches to connect with young people (which is how he discovered Youthwork+!) In Sept 2022 he started training to be a vicar with the Church of England. He is a Curate at St Mary's, Chipping Norton in Oxfordshire.
Olly joined the team at Youthwork+ in November 2020 as a volunteer and joined as a trustee in 2025. He has been involved in hosting networks, supporting rural churches with youth and childrens work, delivering training, as well as co-hosting our Youthwork+ Podcast. Olly shares our passion that all churches, no matter their size or context, have the ability to support and serve the young people living in their local communities.
Trustee
Aaron Hayford
Trustee, Trust Secretary & Volunteer
Hannah Bowden
Hannah works for Youthscape Centre of Research as a Senior Researcher, she is a qualitative researcher with a passion for young people and social justice. Youthscape Centre of Research is a UK based think tank and research unit part of the Christian Youth Charity Youthscape, it studies youth culture, mental health, and faith to help churches, youth workers, and organizations better understand and support young people. Hannah is particularly good at explaining research findings to help those that do youth work to apply that knowledge in useful ways. She is particularly passionate about children in the care system and she sits on the board of a not for profit adoption charity. She studied a degree, a Masters and completed a PHD at Birmingham University, making her officially Dr. Hannah Bowden! (Though obviously not in the medical sense!)
She previously worked for Grace Foundation as a Family Support Worker in a Milton Keynes secondary school. She is married to Lewis and is a part of True Life Church where she leads a small group. She lives locally in a village in Milton Keynes. She has been a trustee with us since 2025, and helps deliver training, shares vital research insights - as well as helping us gather vital research from our network connections. Hannah also has the important job of taking the minutes at trustee meetings.
Trustee
Gemma Milligan
Gemma recently joined us as a trustee in Summer 2026. She works for National Youth Charity Youthscape heading up their Luton based youth work and Luton team. She grew up in Luton, then left to study English and Professional and Creative Writing and took a Graduate Diploma in Youth Work and Ministry. She's been involved in youth work for many years, cutting her teeth for 14 years in London doing statutory youth work, before returning to Luton to work for Youthscape. She's a part of St Hughes Church in Luton, where she also leads youth work. Our founder Becky (who also grew up in Luton) & Gemma have known each other since they were teenagers! Gemma has taken on the role of line managing our director Becky.
Trustee & Treasurer
Current trustee & treasurer vacancy
This is a volunteer role. Contact us to register your interest. Subject to safer recruitment application, DBS check and references.
Trustee
Current trustee vacancy
This is a volunteer role. Contact us to show your interest. Subject to safer recruitment application, DBS and references.
Enough about us, we care about you!
If you lead work with children or young people we’d love to support you – whether you are local to Milton Keynes or far beyond we hope there will be something on this website that will help encourage and support you and your youth or children’s work.
If you don’t find what you are looking for contact us if we can help you we will!