The guidelines represent the project’s second intellectual output. The guidelines should help understand how to translate broad statements of intent for developing youth work education into specific plans and actions while involving different stakeholders.
This document is aimed at:
- higher education institutions that are planning to launch formal education programs for youth workers;
- for governmental bodies that want to initiate exploratory and preparatory processes for investigating the needs in the field of youth work education;
- for youth workers/youth work providers/employers associations that plan to lobby for formal youth work education or to work with higher education institutions on establishing such opportunities;
- for higher education institutions that already have well established youth work programs but want to update them;
- for youth workers and associations that want to lobby for greater inclusion of their input in deciding on the shape and contents of youth work education programs and thus for bringing education closer to practical work on the field;
- and for other relevant stakeholders in a variety of circumstances.
The guidelines were developed on the basis of findings from the first project’s intellectual output – the Compendium of education opportunities for youth workers. In addition, the experts involved in its development conducted additional desk review of relevant documents, as well as interviews with youth work practitioners, teaching staff from higher education, and other stakeholders.
As part of the guidelines, three case studies of established youth work programs in Estonia, Ireland and Wales were compiled, available under the “Case studies” section of this web page. Based on them, guidelines for establishing youth work programs were created, available in the “Conclusions” section. Finally, a “How to” section was created, which provides an overview of the concrete steps that are taken in initiating youth work studies, as well as in evaluating and updating existing study programs.
Lead authors of the compendium are Dragan Atanasov and Biljana Vasilevska – Trajkoska from the Union for Youth Work from North Macedonia.
Contributions came from Lianne Teder from Tallinn University, Dr Duncan Holtom and Dr Howard Williamson from People and Work Unit, Janice McGarry and Niamh Smith from Beyond 96 Youth Club, and Dr Svetlana Trbojevik and Dr Sofija Georgievska from the Institute for Social Work and Social Policy at the Faculty of Philosophy in Skopje.
The European Commission’s support for the production of this publication does not constitute an endorsement of the contents, which reflect the views only of the authors, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.