Heartland Youth For Christ began in August 2003 following the growth and subsequent division of West Leicestershire YFC (WLYFC was formed in 1998 by Nigel Roberts who had a vision for a YFC centre covering urban and rural West Leicestershire)

Up until the summer of 2002, the teams of WLYFC were based in the Ibstock Baptist Church Manse; as a central location between Coalville and District in the north and Earl Shilton and District in the south it was a great place to be. WLYFC worked with volunteers from England, America and Eastern-Europe.  When the Church employed a new minister in the summer of 2002 WLYFC were offered not one new office base but two – one in Coalville and the other in Earl Shilton. This led to the start of two new centres; Heartland YFC and FosseWay YFC.

Heartland YFC than formed a new team and a new vision under the leadership of Kathryn Beniston. It covers the North West Leicestershire area and a few communities just outside of those boarders.

When Kathryn left the team because she became a mother for the first time, Tim Maycock stepped in as acting centre director while he was a student at St John's in Nottingham. In August 2005 Jonathan Middelbos moved over from Belgium to become the Centre Director and lead the team into new activities and adventures.

Under the leadership of Jonathan the centre continued to grow, this showed itself in an involvement with more churches and youth groups.  In August 2006 the team expanded with an American volunteer and we became the base of NOMAD, a sports team that travels around the country to bring the good news to young people by using a football cage (www.yfc.co.uk/nomad).

The mission of Heartland YFC is to reach every young person in this area relevantly with the good news of Jesus Christ; to do this we are now involved with many different youth groups, some cross-denominational projects, outreach events, schools work, training and mentoring,…