What were the key takeaways from the Exchange Forum? What are the realities and challenges for youth work on national levels? And what are future steps? If you are interested to find out more - then read our article!
Written by Domagoj Morić
More than 60 youth work professionals gathered in Leuven to discuss the national realities, sharing the most important victories, challenges, but also to plan future steps - both on national and international level. After three days of discussions, down below we are bringing you some of the key takeaways from our annual event.
During discussions, participants have shared their efforts in strengthening youth work through national conferences, youth forums, working group meetings, and workshops. Besides organising events, participants highlighted their active role in developing strategies that prioritise participation, inclusion and professional standards in youth work.
Many countries have celebrated different achievements that involve recognition of youth work as a profession, establishment of national associations of youth workers and development of new initiatives directed to young people regarding improvement of their employment and education opportunities.
“We need to maintain youth work offering, despite budget cuts and ensure operational sustainability and stable finances."
While these achievements showcase progress, participants also confronted significant obstacles. Some of the challenges on national levels often included political instability, resistance to change, and limited governmental support.
The need for greater stakeholder involvement and sustainable systems for youth work was emphasised quite often. One of the sustainable systems certainly includes stable and continuous funding, which can help in maintaining the quality youth work service for young people. National processes were described using metaphors like “gardening”, “constructing the Tower of Babel with hope,” and “loading…” to capture ongoing efforts and optimism.
Aspirations for the future include achieving stronger international collaboration, refining youth policies, and ensuring sustainable development in youth work.
When organising bigger events, we need to consider stakeholder engagement, which means including decision makers as active participants in events, as it can help in raising awareness of important issues in youth work. Also, a cross-sectoral approach was mentioned several times - as a way to create better recognition of what youth work has to offer. Developing different partnerships holds the potential to be impactful and sustainable.
"We need to strengthen the Community of Practice, which involves fostering resilience, clear roles, and improved communication across European and national levels.”
Existing support mechanisms at the European level have been reinforced as important for the development of European youth work and as a crucial force contributing to the development of local and national youth work.
In particular, the Erasmus+ programme was highlighted as key to developing quality youth work, while support from various institutions and strategic projects was also praised. These include the EU-Council of Europe Youth Partnership, Democracy Reloading, Europe Goes Local, the European Academy on Youth Work, the Strategic Cooperation on Education and Training and Growing Youth Work.
During the two days of the Exchange Forum, participants shared the current reality of youth work in their countries but were also encouraged to develop their own national plans and international collaboration through targeted action plans.
For example, Tunisia is focusing on building intersectional and inclusive partnerships at the local level by assessing community needs, drafting actionable plans, and implementing projects that foster participation and inclusivity.
Similarly, Türkiye emphasises cross-border cooperation by initiating youth exchanges, tracking project impact, and using programmes such as Erasmus+ to build sustainable partnerships and foster innovation in youth engagement.
"We need more collaborations between youth work and the formal education sector."
Kosovo aims to empower youth politically by organising mentorship programmes with political leaders, creating youth advisory councils, and increasing youth representation in decision-making processes.
Bulgaria is going in the direction of aligning its efforts with EU best practices, focusing on national mapping and legislative amendments to better define and implement youth work policies.
Italy plans to integrate the EYWA framework into Erasmus+ through structured youth dialogues, collaborative storytelling, and partnerships with national stakeholders.
Additionally, Croatia is planning to develop a partnership for establishing the Croatian Youth Work Alliance (CroYWA). Within the partnership, they plan to implement study visits to Serbia and Greece in order to learn from their practices. Also, they plan to organise an international event for the community of practice from Croatia, Greece and Serbia to share best practices and to develop new corporations.
When looking at these examples, participants will focus on fostering youth participation, improving policy frameworks and creating impactful partnerships.
"In the end, promoting and recognising youth work requires developing understanding and raising its profile to ensure wider support and engagement."
And what are the future steps within the cooperation partnership SNAC Growing Youth Work that organised the Exchange Forum?
Within Growing Youth Work, we are continuing to support the community of practice in creating spaces to meet and share. Besides regular online “Coffee talks on the European Youth Work Agenda (EYWA)”, where we informally discuss the implementation of the national processes within the EYWA, we launched a new event series "Youth Work Talks”, as a space for professional debate. Also, we are publishing different materials to see how work done on local and national level can be connected with policy processes and the EYWA.
We have a regular newsletter, where we publish new and fresh information about the development of the EYWA. Also, we have quite vivid and active Facebook and Instagram channels, so be sure to follow us.
Are you curious to learn more about the "Exchange Forum on the European Youth Work Agenda"? More articles are available in our news section.