Written by Nik Paddison
The creation of the paper was supported by Generation Europe – The Academy, an international network of youth work organisations and a funding programme for European cooperation. It is coordinated by the International Association for Education and Exchange (IBB e.V.) in Dortmund and, among others, it is funded by Erasmus+ Youth. Its goal is to empower young people to active European citizenship, regardless of their background, their parents' income, or their previous success in the formal education system.
Generation Europe has supported a group of young people from nine different countries to produce a paper, “Young Voices for Youth Work”. The young people are all active in local level youth groups and were responsible for the research and the writing.
How can European youth work be secured in the long term? Young people outline their vision for a sustainable, well-funded, and inclusive youth work in Europe.
The paper’s message is that the future of youth work is linked to the future of our democracies. In the paper the young people outline their vision for a sustainable, well-funded, and inclusive youth work in Europe. Their rationale is that youth work provides a crucial framework for young people to participate meaningfully. They also point out that the spaces for youth work are being threatened by systemic problems such as precarious funding models, a lack of legal recognition and high bureaucratic hurdles.
The paper consists of 28 recommendations for a resilient youth work, including demands for systemic changes in European youth policy. The recommendation topics include, Access, Inclusion and Participation, Legal Frameworks and Recognition, Professionalisation, and Sustainable Funding. The paper is now being used as a lobbying resource in negotiations for youth work in the next Erasmus+ programme generation.
The paper is available for download at: www.generationeurope.org/policypaper