Global youth work

Current activities

 

Enabling Effective Support for the Youth Sector in the East Midlands

This is a new 3-year programme of work (starting July 2008) funded by the Department for International Development

The project aims to bring about an expansion in the scope and quality of global youth work carried out in the East Midlands. In particular it will:

  • Develop critical analytical ability and understanding of global issues at youth worker level that will lead to independent and ongoing project activity within their youth work setting, and develop a similar critical analytic ability and global awareness in young people.

  • Significantly raise awareness of global youth work at strategy and policy level within statutory, voluntary and higher education organisations linked to the youth sector in the East Midlands.

It will achieve the first of these aims through a programme of youth worker training that will see full time youth workers from all 9 statutory youth services in the region, and other youth workers from the voluntary sector, attending a Global Youth Trainer course in the first year of the project. In subsequent years these newly accredited Global Youth Trainers will provide Global Youth Work training through in-house provision to part-time youth workers in their sector. The Global Youth Trainer course will be delivered by De Montfort University  and accredited by them for 15 credits at Masters level. The Global Youth Work training will be OCN accredited - based on the existing DEA national programme revised and extended to make it suitable for local delivery. The project will then explore opportunities for integrating global perspectives into mainstream in-service youth worker training.

It will achieve the second aim of raising awareness of Global Youth Work among decision makers by strengthening  the Global East Midlands network within the East Midlands Regional Youth Work Unit (EMRYWU), showcasing successful examples of Global Youth Work and international exchanges through regular events, preparing briefing papers showing how GYW links to current educational initiatives such as Every Child Matters, and lobbying for GYW to be integrated into all youth work training.

The project will support a piece of research led by De Montfort University to find out the status of GYW in JNC professionally accredited Higher Education Institutes. This will inform follow-on activities to develop a new curriculum for delivery.

The project will also build the capacity of EMRYWU and two DECs in the East Midlands (MUNDI and LMLG) to provide support and resources to cater for the increased demand from newly-trained youth workers wishing to address specific development issues with their young people.

As an off-shoot of planning and developing new training courses the project will develop some new materials, particularly around the use of Open Spaces for Dialogue and Enquiry (OSDE) methodology within youth work and youth worker training.