Over the last 25 years the number of programmes and activities for young people has been steadily increasing. Despite the strong presence of youth work in the field, there is no consensus among its practitioners and other relevant stakeholders on what exactly youth work is, what its purpose and goals are, or what constitutes good quality youth work practice. This gave rise to diverse youth worker practices with varying degrees of effectiveness in identifying the needs of young people and meeting those needs. The main target group of the project are youth workers. They are a key link in the process of creating and delivering youth work activities. Youth workers come from diverse backgrounds, engage in a variety of activities and are employed in a variety of settings, and as such, in certain contexts can be labelled as pedagogues, social workers, animators, etc. The availability of formal dedicated qualifications for youth workers is relatively common across the EU, though these formal dedicated qualifications are not exclusively in the domain of ‘youth work’ but can be in the fields of pedagogy, social work, etc. However, there is often more than one pathway for those working in the field of youth work. Whilst it is most common for youth workers to be trained via specific youth work courses or through specific qualifications in the areas of social work, pedagogy etc., there are only a few EU countries with no clear educational background associated with youth workers. Such is the case in Croatia and Slovenia. Whilst formal qualification routes into youth work do not exist in the project partner countries, there are other non-formal training opportunities available to youth workers. The quality of these training courses varies since there are no set standards. The issue of youth worker education and training is very much linked to the process of its professionalization. Some of the aspects of professionalization include: the introduction of standards and practices for youth workers; a growing number of initial educational programmes and continuous professional development opportunities; youth workers becoming increasingly professionalised in the work they carry out; greater recognition of the professional status of youth workers. In addition to contributing to the overall quality of practice, professionalisation can give youth work clearer delineations in relation to other professions, providing a framework for programmes, job descriptions and supporting good practice. There is an identifiable need for more comprehensive learning opportunities for youth workers as an essential part of professionalising the delivery of youth work. It is necessary to establish a core framework of quality standards for youth work corresponding to national contexts, including competence models for youth workers. Furthermore, there always needs to be an appropriate balance between the acquisition of theoretical knowledge and application of practical skills and community-based learning. Education and training should correspond to the realities of youth work at different levels, adopt creative methods and incorporate the exchange of good practice. It should ensure responsiveness to trends and changing circumstances in young people’s lives, such as extremism, technology or migration. In both project partner countries these needs are underpinned by research, EU and national policy priorities and, most importantly, articulated by practitioners in youth organizations (as expressed in relevant documents of national youth councils in Croatia and Slovenia). The partnership therefore proposes a project whose overall goal is to increase the quality of youth work provision in Croatia and Slovenia. More specifically, the objective is to initiate the process of professionalization of youth work by establishing an evidence-based core framework of standards and by creating high-quality innovative curricula for youth worker education and training programmes leading to a qualification in youth work. The professionalization of youth work is eminently important in securing quality youth work provision and preventing bad practices.. It is imperative that youth work education and training curricula be informed by both the national context and the European perspective. The transnational approach brings clear advantages through the exchange of knowledge and experience in addressing a common need for quality youth work. Also, almost all national youth policies are heavily shaped by the EU and CoE youth policies, and the international dimension is inseparable from any segment of the youth field. Added value lays in the fact that curricula designed in that way allow international mobility, greater openness to innovation and increased sustainability due to the access to greater number of international financial sources.
At the level of outcomes, the project had the following results: detailed evidence-based insight into the current state of youth work (YW) and identification of trends in Croatia and Slovenia; laid foundation for further professionalization of YW; better institutional recognition of youth work and youth workers; more quality education and training opportunities for youth workers; and active network of youth organizations which serve as community-based learning hubs for YW. The project had seven intellectual outputs altogether. The first one included research on the existing educational opportunities for YWs in partner countries, screening of youth work curricula in Europe; field research of the needs in youth work training and education in partner countries, specifically questionnaire for young people in Croatia and interviews with youth workers and young people that participate in youth work practices. This output was a key step that provided the partnership with an insight into the current state of YW in partner counties and made possible to develop other outputs of the project in an evidence-based way. The second output resulted in the development of occupation and qualification standards in Croatia and an occupation standard in Slovenia, all of which are the first of their kind in both countries. The partnership developed a curriculum for a life-long learning programme for YWs in the third output and a curriculum for a tertiary level YW programme in the fourth. The tertiary level programme is the first curriculum for formal education of YWs in Croatia. The results of the fifth output were guidelines for mentoring organizations and mentors that are planned to be used for the practical learning, a part of the tertiary programme for YWs. Two MOOCs were made by the partnership: Youth and Social Entrepreneurship and Digital (Learning) in Youth Work. The last output of the project was a handbook for community-based participatory action research that provides step-by-step instructions for youth workers to improve engagement in their communities. Such an educational material is the first of its kind in Croatia, as there is no literature in Croatian language yet that focuses on such research strategy. The outputs of the project are all working in synergy to better quality, recognition and visibility of YW. Activities on the project were Training course for teachers/lectures/researchers – blended learning (C2) and community based learning (C1). Objectives were to increase quality of the youth LLP training course through the introduction of the blended-learning approach and community-based learning practices. The participants were teachers/lectures/researchers who were engaged in the delivery of the youth work LLP training modules. Training course for mentors – mentoring competences, how to set up a mentoring programme (C3), that brought together YWs - representatives of organizations that expressed their interest in becoming mentoring organizations for youth work students. Main goal of this training was to prepare and empower organisation representatives for the role of community engagement mentors. The participants learned how to set up a mentoring programme and acquired necessary mentoring competences. Training course for mentors – monitoring and evaluation (C4), brought together the same participants from C3 activity. The objective was to increase the quality of the youth work through successful integration of practice-based learning in the community. They learned how to successfully monitor and evaluate students' learning outcomes. LLP youth work test modules (C5 – C17) gathered participants who applied to a module testing LLP programme. These activities gathered youth workers. The goal of this training event was twofold: to equip participants with core competences required for quality provision of youth work and to evaluate the quality of the innovative youth work LLP curriculum. Along with regular course activities, participants took part in an extensive evaluation intervention during the module that informed the overall evaluation of the curriculum. There were several activities and undertakings of the project with participants other than project partners. There was 11 on-line LLP test course training activities and two additional live activities. MEs included Policy lab; conference ‘Youth Work in Flux’; and conference on raising quality of YW. Participants in the MEs included researchers, YWa, policy makers, people from the CSOs and NAs.