Written by Nik Paddison
I am Jessica Reinsch, and I work as an educational officer for International Youth Work at Arbeitsgemeinschaft Jugendfreizeitstätten Sachsen (Association of Youth Leisure Centres Saxony - AGJF).
My main role is to support youth work organisations across the Eastern German region of Saxony in developing, implementing and strengthening the international dimension of their youth work activities. A lot of my work is connected to the Erasmus+ Youth programme, but it is really about helping organisations build sustainable international practice.
That includes things like capacity building, professional training for youth workers and quite a lot of translation work – translating European youth policies and programmes into something that actually makes sense on a local level and in everyday youth work practice.
So, I work at AGJF Sachsen, which is a state-level umbrella organisation for youth work in Saxony. We represent and support a wide range of youth work providers – from NGOs to local public youth services. Within AGJF, there are different units and projects with different focuses, and the one I work in is called Uferlos – Fachstelle für Internationale Jugendarbeit.
Uferlos is basically a regional competence centre for international youth work. We are a small team – three people – and our main aim is to strengthen international youth work structurally in Saxony. So, it is not just about supporting single projects, but about building sustainable structures, competences and networks in the field.
Our regional competence centre for international youth work is building sustainable structures, competences and networks in the field.
A lot of youth organisations in Saxony have little or no experience with international youth work. Many are interested, but they don’t really know how to get started. That is where we come in. My role includes training youth workers, supporting their professional development, and doing quite a bit of counselling and hands-on support.
When it comes to international projects, we mainly support organisations in understanding and using the Erasmus+ Youth programme as a learning and development framework. Often it starts very concretely: a local youth club has an idea – for example a graffiti project around issues that are relevant for young people. Together, we then explore how this idea could be developed into an international youth exchange. Many youth workers like the idea, but they lack experience or international partners, so network-building is a key part of my work as well. I connect youth clubs with partner organisations across Europe and support them through trainings and individual guidance.
Another big topic is the application process. For newcomers, the Erasmus+ Youth application process is complex and not very intuitive. So, I guide organisations step by step through the process. Officially, this is the role of the National Agency, but we have learned that additional support on a local level really makes a difference. Knowing the local context and being able to work closely together over time makes the whole process much more accessible.
We act as a link between small local youth organisations and policymakers and translate the European Youth Work Agenda into regional and local contexts.
On top of that, AGJF also has a political role. We are funded, among others, by the Saxony Ministry of Families and Social Affairs and have a seat at state-level meetings. So, part of our work is advocacy and lobbying. We act as a link between small local youth organisations and policymakers, and this also gives us the opportunity to bring in European perspectives, like the European Youth Work Agenda, and translate them into regional and local contexts.
To be honest, the link to the European Youth Work Agenda didn’t start in a very strategic or formal way. It was more a moment of realisation. Last year I took part in an online event organised by the German National Agency. There was a workshop on the European Youth Work Agenda. Hearing the priority areas, I realised that we are already doing a lot of this in our everyday work – we just never framed it that way.
In my everyday work, when I sit together with youth workers and we brainstorm ideas for an international project, I am not consciously thinking, “okay, this is the European Youth Work Agenda”. I am thinking very practically: what do they need, what would make sense in their context, and how can international youth work actually support them? And when you look at it afterwards, many of these questions are exactly what the Agenda is about.
One priority area is “Quality Development”. This is actually a big part of what we do. It is not only about talking about quality in an abstract way, but about making it usable in practice. Through counselling, training and professional development, we work a lot on questions like: what does quality mean in this specific project, where does it show, and how can we design methods, budgets and structures so that young people with fewer opportunities can really take part? A very practical part of this is also that we develop and provide professional materials that youth workers can actually use in their day-to-day work – for example guidelines, tools or formats that help them plan and implement international projects in a more structured and reflective way.
Quality is also closely linked to partner finding. Having the right partners makes a huge difference for the quality of a project, so we support youth workers in finding partners that really fit their ideas, their target groups and their working methods.
We do a lot on competence development, which links to “A Strategic Framework for Youth Work Development”. We run several training activities every year on topics like inclusion or game-based learning. No matter what the topic is, I always include international perspectives. Very often, participants suddenly realise that the methods or materials they are using were developed in Erasmus+ cooperation partnerships. That is usually a key moment, because they start to see what is actually possible through Erasmus+ Youth, and it encourages them to think about developing their own projects and their own practice further.
So overall, I would say that Uferlos works very much at the intersection between European frameworks and everyday youth work practice. We translate these big policy ideas into something that makes sense on the ground, at local and regional level – even if we don’t always call it that.
In the future, I would like to see Uferlos strengthened as a more permanent structure. At the moment, we rely on annual funding, which means reapplying every year. Long-term funding would make it much easier to plan sustainably and further develop the work.
If international perspectives, mobility and cooperation just became a normal part of youth work everywhere, that would feel like a real success.
There is also the issue of impact. Policymakers often expect clear indicators and numbers, but youth work doesn’t always work that way. We know from practice that it is effective, even if we cannot always prove it statistically. I think this tension needs to be acknowledged more honestly instead of pretending that everything can be measured.
Finally, I would like to see our role change over time. In the long run, the goal would actually be to make a specialised centre like Uferlos less necessary, because international youth work has become a natural, self-evident part of youth work everywhere. If international perspectives, mobility and cooperation just became a normal part of youth work everywhere, that would feel like a real success for us.