From church-led teams, to 2 year placements, we want to help you find your place in global mission.
Our Explore programme is about ‘short-term mission; long-term discipleship’. It’s designed to cover placements of the following kind:
- Church-led Teams: If your church is interested in sending a team for a short-term trip, there are a number of ways we could help facilitate this. Whether you already know SIM or any of our missionaries or not, we’d love you to get in touch.
- Medical Electives: We have medical opportunities all over the world and if you’re in training and can go overseas as part of your study, we’d love to hear from you!
- Block Placements for a college/university course: This could be a Bible college placement, or a term abroad for language course, or something completely different! We’d love to help you use this opportunity to serve cross-culturally.
- Individual placements from a few weeks to a few years: We’re all about a relational and prayerful exploration process. Whether you have a summer holiday to give, or would like to serve a little longer, we can help you in this journey.
Please do enquire if you’d like to have a no-pressure conversation with us to chat about any of these possibilities further.
Where can I go?
SIM is passionate about crossing barriers to make the gospel known.
We seek to send where there is an urgent need for more gospel workers to be mobilised to serve. We work in some challenging and hard places, and have trusted, experienced teams serving on the ground in over 70 countries.
We work in close partnership with the participants, the sending church, and our receiving teams to ensure a placement is appropriate.
Medical Electives & Bible College placements
We have a number of experienced receiving teams who are able to facilitate these short-term placements. Please contact us for further information about where you can serve.
We have medical ministries in 21 different countries, and have recently sent medical students to West Africa, Nigeria, Angola, Zambia, South Asia, Madagascar and Bolivia, among others!
Bible College block placements can also take place all over the SIM world. We’ve had block placement students teaching summer courses for theological colleges, and others choosing to do sports ministry. We’ll work with you to identify the right opportunity.
Tailor-made opportunities
Our placement process is relational and prayerful, and our mobilisers seek to get to know enquirers well enough to discern an appropriate ministry opportunity.
SIM works in over 70 countries, and the need for the gospel is great. This means that there are ample possibilities and we can’t list them all here! We do have a search function on our website that allows you to filter through many of our ministry opportunities across the SIM world.
We have more than 100 opportunities for placements of less than a year, with a broad range of skills needed – IT, Media, Communications, Finance, Pastoral, Children’s and Youth Work, Maintenance, Teaching, Arts, Sport, Medicine etc! Get in touch with us to talk to a mobiliser who can help find an opportunity that fits your skills.
Costs
There are a number of costs to be aware of, and we’re happy to talk those through with you. For short-term placements, the cost of flights will usually be significantly greater than the cost of the placement.
All placements are self-supported, and we know fundraising can be daunting. Doing it with us means you will be supported with ideas and resources, and you’ll get the additional 25% Gift Aid on eligible donations.
You will need to have the funds for your full placement before you fly. We’ll help you with a personalised budget which will include items like:
- Fully comprehensive travel insurance (organised by SIM through Banner)
- Visa
- International flights
- In-country travel, accommodation and food costs, dependent on the itinerary
- Vaccinations
- Admin fees (covers the support offered to you by SIM UK, International and the team receiving you on the ground
- Health check process
We will explain all of these costs to you and talk through the process of support-raising. Your mobiliser is there to support you through any questions you may have.
What’s next?
Start the process by filling in our enquiry form, which will help us work out how we can best help you. You will put you in touch with the right people to answer any questions you might have.