WSCF-Europe focuses on empowering and educating as many young people as possible about ecumenical, human rights and social justice issues, building capacity within the national and local Student Christian Movements that are at the heart of the organisation.

Though a difficult endeavour given the nature of our work, we always try to measure the impact of our activities, events and campaigns in various ways – for instance, through evaluations carried out at the end of each activity/event, bespoke feedback sessions, testimonials and looking at statistics on number of participants, countries reached etc. We try to learn from every experience in order to improve the quality of the content that we deliver to our young people and the ways in which we deliver it, and in order to develop new and innovative ways of engaging them and reaching as many young people as possible.

Until the late 1960s, the international staff of the WSCF were based in Geneva. A major structural change in 1972 decentralized the WSCF into six regions: Africa, Asia-Pacific, Europe, Latin America, Middle East and North America. The Geneva headquarters became the inter-regional office. Programmatic and decision-making work shifted to the regions, reflecting the new mood of self-determination in third-world countries and the search for contextualization in theology and politics. This is essentially the process that gave birth to WSCF-Europe, as known today.

In the 1960s and 1970s, WSCF movements, especially in North America and Europe, were closely involved with the radical political movements. Their political solidarity and their critique of education convinced them that their mission field was no longer in educational institutions only, but on the streets and in the villages. The theme of the WSCF in the 1970s – Christian Witness in the Struggle for Liberation – sums up the broadened, renewed political commitment of the WSCF at the same time it moved to a regional structure.