A Romanian Agenda: Insights into youth work development in Romania

Can you tell us who you are and what you do?

My name is Andrei Popescu. I am working as a consultant in the field of youth at the Romanian national level and the European level. In 2016 I had the amazing chance to be nominated as Secretary of State for Youth Affairs in the Ministry of Youth and Sports (as it used to be called). Also, in a previous life I used to be the head of the Erasmus+ Youth in Action and European Solidarity Corps programmes, and co-head of the Youth Department in the Romanian National Agency.

Right now, I am doing training and consultancy work, facilitating topics that are related to developing long term strategic processes and youth participation. For the time being I am also working with Ploiești city, the current Romanian Youth Capital project helping to develop their local youth strategies.

What is the current situation of youth work in Romania? 

This is the kind of question that can have a good and a not so good answer depending on how you are looking at it. Youth work has been flourishing over the last years and there are many things that have been developed. This is in terms of legislation, human resources, and competence development.

However, when it comes to having a consistent and structured approach, when it comes to developing youth strategies at the national or local level, this is something that we have struggled with in Romania.

Unfortunately, the Ministry responsible for Youth has gone through numerous changes in the last ten years, for example in the latest change we have gone from the Ministry of Youth and Sports to the Ministry of Family, Youth and the Equality of Chances. This means there is little or no continuity which in turn leads to youth affairs not being a priority.

But a lot of infrastructure has been developed, this includes a number of new youth centres being opened. We also have two really interesting national programmes that have been spreading across the country. For urban areas we have something called the Romanian Youth Capital that is pretty much following the European Youth Capital concept.

And we have the European Youth Village which is an entire ecosystem built around young people in rural areas. Next year there is going to be a European summit in Slovakia where we would like to scale up the idea and make it a European project.

What about the European Youth Work Agenda, what is happening with that in Romania?

There are a lot of things happening that are supporting the principles and the objectives of the Agenda, and a lot of inspiration for youth work in Romania has been taken from it.

One of the things that has come from the Agenda is that we now have an annual Youth Work Convention, so far, we have reached the fourth edition. At these conventions, principles and ideas are discussed, and I would say there are some very concrete results that have come from them over the years.

The Conventions and a Declaration

Our first national Convention was online and the ministry responsible for youth at that time was very much engaged and willing to develop a national Youth Worker White Charter. This charter was supposed to frame and guide the role of the youth worker in Romania. Unfortunately, this has still not been ratified because of the many governmental and ministerial changes that keep happening.

In a later edition of the Convention, we transformed the charter into a National Youth Worker Declaration. This was really built from the bottom up with youth workers providing inputs and direction on some very concrete issues they are facing.

This year our Convention’s focus was on how we can support youth workers to increase the active participation of young people in society. Romania has had four sets of elections this year. The European ones, local ones, and the parliamentary, and then finally there was the presidential one at the end of November. We wanted to explore how we can support young people to become more civically engaged – not only for this year but always and how to develop their awareness that the political arena is going to affect their lives.

The Youth EcoSystem

We have this EcoSystem concept. Recently we got together with youth stakeholders from Romania and across Europe to create it. It is a vision for youth work that places young people at the very core of the work. They should be supported by the vision.

In order to put that vision into practise, we need to have accessible funding and not just government funding or Erasmus+ but recognising other funding streams such as the European Social Fund, the Youth Guarantee and even crowdfunding. There need to be effective structures in place, these should include the public authorities and institutions, more youth organisations than we have now, youth councils, advisory bodies and youth movements.

There needs to be not only effective infrastructure but also welcoming infrastructure. So, for a young person to know that they can go and relax, and if they have some sort of issue or problem, they know they can find the right person to sit down with and talk about it and get support.

We need places that welcome the young people as human beings in development, not as a potential labour force or someone to be educated.

We need to be able to ensure quality youth work. Yes, we have youth centres and youth activities going on already, but we need more based on advice and information, counselling, or more non-formal learning opportunities for the young people. And finally, we need skilled staff, the youth workers need training and education, and appropriately paid jobs to harvest their full potential.

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

I want to see the EcoSystem being fully realised. I would like to see everything that is not right, changed, and all the pieces of the puzzle which are currently all over the place, I would like to see them working together. I would like to see many of us, individuals and organisations, working together putting the different building blocks together.

We have the Declaration that is already there, and it clearly states what the youth workers need in terms of professional career development and in terms of infrastructure and support. So, I would want to see that fulfilled. We have a new youth law in process, and we have a National Youth Strategy but somehow the two don't connect well together. The new youth law is not in effect yet because there is some ping pong between the parliament and the constitutional court, so that needs to be sorted out.

There is one expression that I would love to see defining the next five years of youth work, it is that we should be taking a more systemic approach and looking at youth work starting from the EcoSystem that we have developed. I want us to be coherent as a sector, having a vision, that is fully operating, and with quality youth work happening both in rural and urban areas.

How should the Agenda be supporting this process?

Something I have noticed is that at the level of the authorities in Romania, both national and local, there is not much attention being given to our youth work successes. However, if they hear the European Commission proposing an idea or praising something we do, then the authorities are proud and patriotic about all the brilliant youth work things that are happening in Romania.

It would be great if the Agenda could provide this kind of feedback to the Romanian authorities about the efforts in the youth work sector. Then they will pay more attention to what is happening here because there are a lot of brilliant things that are happening here.

Andrei Popescu

Andrei Popescu is working as a consultant in the field of youth at the Romanian national level and the European level. In 2016 he was nominated as Secretary of State for Youth Affairs in the Ministry of Youth and Sports.