Written by Nik Paddison
We had the pleasure to meet with Carola Meier and Aleksandra Vedernjak to talk about the national process taking place in Austria in connection with the European Youth Work Agenda. We talked about the current situation of youth work in Austria, the influence of the Agenda, and where they would like to see youth work in the future in Austria.
I am Carola Meier, I am the national coordinator in Austria for the European Youth Work Agenda. I am working in the Youth Ministry and I am responsible for all the European issues concerning or regarding family and youth policies - both fields are in our department.
I am Aleksandra Vedernjak. I work for the OeAD-GmbH – Austria’s Agency for Education and Internationalisation which is the Erasmus+ National Agency in Austria and based in Vienna. I am responsible for the SNAC Growing Youth Work. Part of my responsibilities, together with Carola, are to communicate about and establish the European Youth Work Agenda in Austria.
Carola
I think we are quite well-developed and established with youth work being fairly well recognised in Austria. We have a number of structures, for example, umbrella organisations which are responsible for different types of youth work. We also have a financial structure for youth organisations and the Federal Youth Promotion Act, which states that youth organisations can have money to implement youth work.
Aleksandra
One thing that is regarded as a best practice example is the Austrian National Qualification Framework. This competence framework recognises youth worker training and has a well developed certification process. Also, there is a one year training course for becoming a youth worker which is not a university course, it is run by WIENXTRA. We don't have any university course for youth work, it is covered inside a social work bachelor degree. There is a big discussion in Austria about whether we should have this or not, although right now, which many see as a positive, is that you can become a youth worker without having to finish a degree in university.
Carola
Something I think is important to know about Austria, is that we have a special situation like Germany and Switzerland, we have federal states within the national state. Our nine federal states are very strong and they have a lot of independence. For example, each state is responsible for the youth work in their state and has different prerequisites for it. This means that youth work is a little bit different across the country because it is adapting to the situation of the federal state.
Aleksandra
It is very diverse across the whole country which creates a need for exchange and communication. This is where we still need to grow. There are also some struggles involving long-term financing, we have a lot of lobbying happening on that topic by many of the umbrella organisations.
Carola
We created a national working group where the ministry, the national agency for the EU youth programmes, and all the umbrella organisations come together. At this working group we exchange knowledge from the European level to the national level, and now also to the regional level. Our next goal is to reach the local level. I think we have started well with creating these new structures and creating new impulses to further develop our youth work.
Aleksandra
Many things from the European Youth Work Agenda have already been established. Our role currently is to communicate and to exchange, to listen to the needs and demands of the youth work umbrella organisations, to network and to make possible networking events. A lot of the national youth strategies have been inspired by the European Youth Goals and Agenda. There are some regions where there is a developmental process going on to develop new regional youth strategies.
Aleksandra
One event, that has now been established as an annual national event, is an exchange and networking event with regional youth officers from all over Austria, including Southern Tyrol, the German-speaking part of northern Italy. This is organised with three umbrella youth organisations.
In the first year we looked at European, national and regional youth strategies so we could know what strategies have been developed. This year we had guests from all over Austria who presented their good practices of youth participation. The event has been very well accepted and is regarded as a basis for exploring common ground and for sharing about Erasmus+. There is a lot of space for lobbying, for exchanging information about our national youth strategy and where the process is now in the regions.
Carola
In terms of our future plans for this event, we have started to make a format for the local level. We will reach out to local youth councils and will offer them a space where they can exchange, where they can see what information there is from the European, national and regional levels. We take time to explore how we can work together.
Carola
I think a good five-year goal for youth work would be that everyone in youth work knows about the European level. There are a lot of tools and there is a lot of information and manuals that can help the local levels. The problem currently is that the information is not spread so well, I would like that myself and people in my kind of position become better agents for the European Youth Work Agenda. This would mean that everybody would know what they can do, what the financial potential is, and what kind of projects they can do. This is a little bit of a blind spot in Austria, we are well developed in youth work, but not everyone knows what is going on and what opportunities are available for them.
Aleksandra
I would like to see a deeper exchange between all levels of youth work in Austria. I would like to see an end to the struggles with different stakeholders over long term financing of youth work. I think there should be much stronger cross sectoral collaboration, especially with schools, higher education and health. In five years, it will be good to have the European Youth Work Agenda continuing to support youth work to be independent and to provide more spaces for young people.
I would like to see a deeper exchange between all levels of youth work in Austria.
Carola
I think this is a very, very interesting topic. It’s very interesting to look to the future and prepare for the future. There is a huge demographic shift happening now, there are less and less young people. It will be interesting to see how we manage to keep their voices heard, especially their political voices. They are young people and the future is their future, so they have to be part of the decision making, the fact that there are less young people should not matter.
Because of this I think youth work will change in some ways. Maybe there will be an intergenerational factor to youth work, where it creates a common space for all society, not just for a specific age group. That would be my feeling about the future, but we will see what happens.
Aleksandra
I also think the youth voices should be heard more and not have their importance or strength taken away. I hope that politically, and also on a society level that youth work will continue to have a lot of potential to grow and gain more recognition.
Hopefully this is somewhere where we can help because we have the possibilities to get together, we have things like the event series Youth Work Talks, webinars and conferences like the Exchange Forum. These are places where people in the community of practice can exchange and learn from each other. These events make little steps towards guaranteeing a future whereas many young people as possible have as many possibilities as possible.