In May 2017 the Council of Europe concluded on their first recommendation on youth work. The recommendation encourages member states to develop and strengthen youth work policies and practices. The recommendation draws special attention to the fact that youth work needs a competency-based framework for the education and training of youth workers. Some countries have done a lot regarding the matter on youth work education while others are falling behind. In order to uphold this recommendation the project aims to establish a coherent and flexible competency-based framework for the education and training of paid and volunteer youth workers that takes into account existing practice, new trends and arenas, as well as the diversity of youth work. With the cooperation we aim to look at what we have regarding youth work education and how it is structured. By doing this the projects objectives are to support the further professional development of youth workers as well the project partners want to take a closer look on why we need youth work education and how will that help youth work gain status and recognition. The participating organisations are Ungdom og Fritid, the Norweigian National youth club organisation. bOJA, Austria, the centre of competency for Open Youth Work in Austria. The Faculty of Education at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden and SamFés, the Icelandic National Youth Club organisation. The activities conducted throughout the project are transnational project meetings, research, training of trainers, focus groups and the development of the educational framework and dissemination of the results. Being the only research institute the University of Gothenburg will be responsible for the research that will serve as the basis for the educational framework. Before conducting the framework there will be three learning, teaching, training events conducted. The first two events will be the platform to test different methods and approaches to youth work education on youth workers from each of the participating organisations. After the event focus groups will be held on these conducted methods and approaches. The results from the focus groups will then serve as an introduction to the participants idea of youth work education and their view on how it should be. The final Learning Teaching Training event will be an international event, where youth workers from all organisations will participate and methods and approaches will be conducted in an international setting. That way we will be able to see which approaches and methods work best and should be used in the international educational framework. bOJA have already conducted a competency-based educational framework for their national context and will thus be responsible for the development of the international competency-based educational framework. The framework will work upon the results from the focus groups, existing research and comparative research.The results to be expected from the project is a model of certification of different competency building activities as well as a competency-based framework for the education and training of youth workers. For the participants the training will lead to a deeper understanding of how youth work education is as well as the necessity for it, and they will have new tools in their youth work tool-box to help them promote recognition and validation of youth work and informal and non-formal learning. They will have taken part in creating a youth work educational framework which will empower them with a sense of ownership and qualified youth workers. Hopefully this project will as well contribute to new voices and realities in the debate for the recognition and validation of youth work education. The participants will also gain a broader international network which will give them an example to point to in the debate for youth work education in their home country. Participating organisations will get feedback on the work they present and they will be a part of discussions which might influence the way they think about youth work education. Hopefully this project will reveal new paths to follow for the organisations which participate in it.
With implementing this project, we wanted to achieve two key objectives: 1) To strenghten the quality of youth work in line with the Council of Europe Recommendation on youth work. 2) To support the further professional development of youth workers. In building on these key objectives of the project, we further wanted to: 1) Utilize the competency-based framework and the increased visibility of youth work competencies to strenghten the status and recognition of youth work, both in the partner countries and on the European level 2) Use this project to support the process in several countries of establishing or strenghtening a higher education for youth work
The project builds upon the Council of Europe's recommendation on youth work from 2017. With this, the Council of Europe encouraged member states to develop and strengthen youth work policies and practices. The recommendation draws special attention to the fact that youth work needs a competency-based framework for the education and training of youth workers. This has also been a key concern for the partner countries of this project. The lack of a competency-based framework for youth work has posed a barrier both for 1) strenghtening the quality of youth work and youth work training and education and 2) visiblity for the competencies that youth workes have and use in their work, and thus for recognition and validation of youth work. With this project, we wanted to establish a coherent and flexible competency-based framework for the education and training of paid and volunteer youth workers that could address these barriers.