Growing youth work in Latvia

Written by Nik Paddison

Can you tell us about yourself, who you are and what you do?

My name is Renate Mencendorfa and right now I work for the Ministry of Education and Science in Latvia. I am the senior expert in the youth field. My arrival at this position in the Government has been a long road in connection with youth work.

I started in the Scout and Guide movement as a young person, then joined activities in other youth organisations where I got the chance to participate in the European Voluntary Service in Austria at a Youth Information Centre. After this experience I realised I wanted to stay in youth work for a career, so I became a youth worker in one of Latvia’s municipalities.

I also worked for a while in the Latvian National Youth Council, my role was connected to advocacy, where I got to understand the youth field from different angles. This role also meant I could work towards improving youth work in Latvia. Now I am at the Ministry continuing to work for youth work and youth policy.

What is the situation of youth work in Latvia? 

If I were to describe the situation of youth work in Latvia in one word, it would be “developing”. In recent years, we have made huge developmental steps in our youth work. We already had some things, of course, but in recent years it feels like we've really gone from one big step to another, building the system.

Youth Workers Occupational Standard 

One of the most recent achievements from last year was that the Youth Workers Occupational Standard was approved. This was originally introduced ten years ago but never got updated.

We rewrote the whole thing, and we had the Council of Europe Youth Policy Advisory Mission offering us advice and feedback for its development. We feel we now have one of the best Youth Workers Occupational Standard in Europe, something we are very proud of.

Formal education of youth workers

Having the Occupational Standard will help us move forward with developing a higher education programme for youth workers. Currently, there is no higher education programme in Latvia despite there being a demand for this from the field for many years now.

When I was a face-to-face youth worker, we were talking about this and asking why we don’t have such a programme. Now we are entering into an agreement with the University of Latvia, and together we are in the process of developing a curriculum. T, this is a huge step for us.

United Quality Standards for Municipalities for Youth Work

Another thing which is worth a mention is that last year we approved a United Quality Standard for municipalities for youth work. It is like a self-assessment tool where the municipality can assess where it stands with its youth work offer.

It consists of four blocks: system, youth workers, youth participation, and youth work itself. They do the self-assessment so they can see where they need to make some improvements or see where things are going very well.

Recognition

We are also working on raising awareness of what youth work is and why it is needed. We experience a lot of issues in recognition, for example, from youth workers recognising themselves or other youth workers.

Many cannot explain in an understandable way what it is they do to policy makers and why this work is important. This is something else we are developing to build strategies and support for youth workers to be able to do this.

National Agency

We have very good cooperation with our National Agency – Agency for International Programmes for Youth, Republic of Latvia. In the past, this has not always been so, but right now, we are really on the same page and really complementing each other in youth policy developments and in developing the youth work environment.

How is Latvian youth work connecting with the Agenda? 

I was checking again the eight priority areas of the European Youth Work Agenda, and I realised that we really can say that there are things we are doing in each of the priority areas. I will share some examples.

Develop and expand the youth work offer

In relation to “Develop and expand the youth work offer”, we are reaching out and involving more and more young people from all backgrounds, especially young people with fewer opportunities. Our work here includes support for youth NGOs and projects where they work with young people with different backgrounds.

Another aspect of this priority area is our development of digital youth work. There is a Recovery Fund financing here in Latvia, where we have around 4 million euros for municipalities to improve the digital youth work system in their municipality. Also, the Latvian National Youth Workers Association has just recently been established. This is something that has been a long time coming. This was achieved with support from the National Agency.

Innovation and emerging challenges

As I mentioned, we have this digital youth work project, one of its aims is to raise young people’s digital competencies. So, this is one example of “Innovation and emerging challenges”.

Another example, which is really interesting for me, is a project called Shadow Elections. The Ministry, the NGO European Movement in Latvia, the National Youth Council, the Nordic Council of Ministers Office, and approximately 15 municipalities have signed onto this project. This is something new in Latvia. Shadow elections are a way to support young people in understanding democratic processes and values. They also encourage young people to engage in such processes and explore the importance of elections. Currently, this is a pilot project, but we would like to see it implemented nationwide.

We have also created an action for the safety and mental health of young people, which is called Initiative Contact. We developed this programme after COVID. It is an initiative for young people in schools to turn their schools into a nicer and healthier environment. They can apply for up to 1200 Euro to do this. When they want to apply for this initiative, they have to attend a training that builds their competencies and helps them to make a good application.

Recently, we updated this initiative so now it is also about participation and capacity building of their school parliament. This programme has a lot of very good results and has involved hundreds of young people.

Where would you like to see youth work in five years time? 

Quality youth work

I hope that youth workers also have a deeper understanding of what is meaningful youth work. I still see in some places that the youth work is just entertainment and not so much about learning or building competencies or giving support to the young people. So, I hope that after five years the quality of youth work will be higher.

Different programmes

I want us to have this higher education programme at the university where people can study youth work. I hope that the shadow elections project will be happening in all municipalities and that there is no pressure from politicians against it.

More recognition

I would like us in the youth field all over Europe and beyond to be better at monitoring what it is we are doing in youth work so that we don’t need to keep creating new recommendations, conclusions or concepts all the time. More self-recognition of what we have already achieved.

Youth work in some countries is really ahead, and in some it is behind. It would be much better if we were all closer to the ones that are ahead with their recognition, quality and implementation of youth work. Maybe better monitoring would also be good, so we can see why it is not working in some countries and have ways to support those countries. So, I really hope that after five years youth work is totally recognised by the politicians.

Less bureaucracy

Less bureaucracy would also be good, the Erasmus+ Youth programme application process looks to be so hard nowadays. It is really not youth-friendly, especially with so many pages to write, so I hope that we will find that in five years we have some balance.