This is National Volunteer Week, but the truth is, YouVersion’s amazing community of volunteers—1200+ of you so far (and counting)—deserve honor and recognition every single day. Your passionate work helps get God’s Word into the hands and inside the hearts of people around the world. It’s only through your many contributions that together our YouVersion team serves literally millions of people, helping them engage with the Bible easily every day.
YouVersion volunteers are regular people—people just like you—who serve in all kinds of big and small ways, offering abilities as unique as they are: design, testing, formatting text, social media… the list goes on and on. Renee is a stay-at-home mom who responds to issues reported through the Bible App™ on different platforms. Chris performs data entry. During his downtime, Russ, a police officer, leads a team of other volunteers responding to help requests online. Dan is a guy who develops software. And here are just a few other examples of the “typical” YouVersion volunteer: David is a Genius at an Apple retail store, Brian is an IT manager at a prominent U.S. university, Nicole is a woman in Jamaica who manages a retail store, Dean is a senior executive at a major telecommunications network, Drewe is another IT manager (this one for a major motorcycle manufacturer in Australia), and college students Craig, Will, and Brian.
One volunteer, Jerry, has translated (and led other volunteers in translating) significant portions of our interfaces into traditional and simplified Chinese. In fact, just since January 1 of this year, 160 volunteers have helped with translation into other languages. These incredible people were instrumental in preparing the imminent, all-new iOS release (for iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch), translating its interface into 16 different languages! While some volunteers may only be able to offer an hour or two, others spend several hours a week. It all matters.
You are part of a movement, a revolution of millions of people reading (and hearing!) God’s Word in their heart language. Of course, the more people who join us, the more we can reach together. We have many places you can serve, including some that don’t require a lot of your time. Let us know how you can help at our volunteer sign-up.
We cannot say “thank you” sincerely or often enough. You are literally changing this world. You guys are impacting millions. And millions…can impact billions.
Thank you.
What that means is that more people are now engaging with God’s Word through the Bible App—just on Android devices—than were even using the Bible App on every platform at this same time last year. And of course, they’re participating with the millions of others also using the Bible App on iPhone/iPad/iPod touch, BlackBerry, Windows Phone and other platforms. In fact, the YouVersion community has been connecting with the Bible through the Bible App collectively for more than 6 billion minutes!