The International Fellowship of Evangelical Students (IFES) is an association of about 136 evangelical Christian student movements worldwide, encouraging evangelism, discipleship and mission among students. The goal of the organisation is to establish local autonomous student movements in every country where there is tertiary education. The member movements cooperate to pioneer new work and to strengthen existing groups. In addition, there is work in countries where ministry to students is not yet affiliated, increasing the number of countries where IFES is working to nearly 160 countries altogether.
The organizational centre of IFES is in Oxford, England. Dr. Daniel Bourdanné is the current General Secretary, Femi Adeleye and Gideon Yung are the Associate General Secretaries. Dr. Bourdanné was installed as General Secretary at the IFES World Assembly on 17 July 2007. Previously he served as Regional Secretary for Francophone Africa. Other General Secretaries have been Australian C. Stacey Woods (1947–1972), Singaporean Chua Wee Hian (1972–1991) and Welshman Lindsay Brown (1991–2007). But the heart of the movement are the thousands of students, volunteers and staff who faithfully and sacrificially contribute in their local settings, but will never be recognised or eulogised.
This movement encourages interdenominational evangelism in all its member movements. At the 2007 World Assembly, six strategic priorities were re-affirmed: Evangelism & Mission, Global Partnership, Leadership Development & Formación (a Spanish word which means well-rounded development), Governance of IFES & National Movements, Integral Approach to Ministry and Fund Development. For the quadrennium 2007-2011, the prioritisation and application of these six strategic priorities are still being considered as leadership interprets the results from the World Assembly discussions. In addition, the IFES's historic emphases on inductive Bible study, small groups and "the discipleship of the mind", which is evidence of a strong commitment to discipleship, will continue.
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