Making the value of youth work visible - 04:05:2022-1
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[00:00:00] Nik: And I said, well, actually I don't work in Montenegro. I work as a youth worker I work as a trainer. And then I go into the spiel about youth work. And one of the last times this happened, the guy turned round to me and said, oh, so you control young people and tell them what to do. And I was just absolutely devastated.

[00:00:20] Nik: Saying no.

[00:00:26] Ismael: Hello everyone. And welcome to Under 30 a podcast brought to you by the partnership between the European commission and the council of Europe in the field of youth. I'm Ismael Paez Civico and together with Tanya Basarab , we'll be hosting this episode. We hope you enjoy.

[00:00:54] Tanya: Welcome to this new episode of under 30 and today, we are [00:01:00] excited to bring to you together with, um, our guests and with Ismael, my cohost, the, eh, the new library renewed and refreshed and enriched library on recognition of youth work. Probably, if you think about recognition, it's one of the concepts and terms that goes along, you've worked for as long as it's existed.

[00:01:26] Tanya: Um, and it would be really interesting to discuss today with our guests, Darko Markovic and Nik Paddison, who have been working with us on renewing the library and on kind of bringing a recognition 2.0 resource, uh, to the youth sector. What have been the changes around since at least since the last convention, uh, what you think.

[00:01:54] Tanya: Has improved. Um, I remember vividly one of our, one of the [00:02:00] conferences of Europe goes local. And one of the researchers was saying that, you know, there is quite a strong intra- sectoral recognition of youth workers. So people recognize its value, its contribution it's um, importance. But when it comes to external recognition, we have a long way to go.

[00:02:19] Tanya: So it would be interesting to have a couple of reflections on that. So before we go on, maybe I invite Nik and Darko to briefly introduce yourselves.

[00:02:31] Nik: Hi. Yes. My name is Nik. Um, I'm originally from the UK. Uh, and my background professional background is as a youth worker face-to-face youth worker, which I did for, for many, many years in the UK.

[00:02:45] Nik: And, uh, quite some time ago now, uh, I got into the field of, uh, training other people to be youth workers and, uh, have been working now for several years. As a full-time independent freelance trainer at the European level, [00:03:00] uh, working on numerous subjects related to youth work and, uh, well training people to be youth workers and training trainers.

[00:03:08] Nik: These are the two kind of core areas that say of, of the youth works training youth work sector in, in Europe. And, uh, I've been involved in this project, uh, actually, uh, started at the second youth work convention actually before the second youth work convention where we, uh, With Darko and Tanya produced the first library with stories about how youth work changed my life and a mapping of tools of recognition.

[00:03:34] Nik: Uh, things have developed quite a long way since then, but yeah, I'm not going to go into more of that just now, but that would be my introduction. Hi,

[00:03:42] Darko: uh, from my side, um, Darko I'm coming from Belgrade, sir. Um, my involvement in youth work and civil society, which for me is very much connected, actually started in the mid nineties, in Serbia in a country

[00:03:57] Darko: that was a, in a, uh, [00:04:00] post-war partially a situation after the balkan wars, but also facing, let's say NATO bombing in 99. And there was lots of suffering around so, uh, we've been engaged together with my colleagues in supporting, uh, initially lots of groups of children in groups of youth in, um, dealing and coping, uh, wages situation.

[00:04:23] Darko: Uh, what is very interesting back then, although civil society was growing in Serbia, uh, and there was lots of new terminology coming to the field. So we learn what INGOs are, what, uh, strategies are, what, uh, uh, projects are. But back then, we didn't know exactly how we call what we do. And I remember the moment when we also tried started actually to train other people from other organizations and we call them, call this what we did a psycho-social work with children and youth.

[00:04:55] Darko: And it was only when I started working in international level. So after 2000, [00:05:00] when I understood out, okay, there is something that people call youth work and there is something that people call non-formal education. And, um, it was interesting that these two terms were not just terminological change for us, but it was literally identity labels.

[00:05:16] Darko: So we understood actually we are part of larger field of youth work, larger field of no formal education. There's a whole community out there in Europe who is actually doing what we did in Serbia. So somehow I get involved in European programs since 2000. And I also remember the moment around 2004.

[00:05:34] Darko: Which was period when the first pathways paper, uh, came out, um, and the symposium in Strasburg winners. So understood. It's not just that what we do is youth work and non-formal education, but there's also lots of attempts, especially then starting to get better recognized, uh, these two things. Uh, and since then, actually I'm very actively involved in developing lots of recognition strategies.[00:06:00]

[00:06:00] Darko: Tools projects, initiatives, uh, including, uh, uh, lots of, uh, national level initiatives, but also lots of European level initiatives. For example, I was quite involved in, uh, development of youth pass and, uh, being part of the advisory group there for quite some

[00:06:16] Tanya:

[00:06:16] Tanya: Well, actually, that's a good bridge to contextualize a little bit, our discussion in the fact that recognize youth work has been on and off as a priority.

[00:06:27] Tanya: Quite strongly for the last five years, probably since the adoption, since the second youth work convention, especially, and the adoption of the council of Europe recommendation on youth work. But now we clearly see that it's one of the objectives that both a European organizations want to focus on and in the EU youth strategy, it's focusing on recognition, quality and innovation in youth work.

[00:06:54] Tanya: And the council of Europe still wants to, um, Advocate for [00:07:00] the adoption implementation of the whole recommendation on youth work, which is actually to build systems that support youth work, um, across the board. So interestingly with this background already, before the third youth work convention, the three of us thought let's have a look at

[00:07:18] Tanya: our resources since this pathways project. And are we going in the right direction? And we quite quickly understood that there's quite a lot that has been developed still when you talk to someone from a country from national or local level, the first thing that people are going to say is that we need more and better recognition of youth work.

[00:07:39] Tanya: So maybe a question to both of you, why do you think youth work isn't recognized yet, or at least people don't feel that it is recognized well on social and political levels. And how do you see the value of this new resource library for, [00:08:00] uh, encouraging that?

[00:08:01] Nik: Yeah, this is, this is a huge question. And, uh, I, I think one of the difficulties is.

[00:08:09] Nik: That we are not a statutory, um, body in, in, I think in all countries of Europe. I remember my last job in the UK as a youth worker, uh, we got, uh, uh, funding to, to work with young people who were excluded from schools and it was a three-year program of funding. It took one year before we actually got any cooperation with the schools.

[00:08:35] Nik: The teachers didn't want to work with us. The principals of the schools didn't want to acknowledge us because they didn't see us as being legitimate. It was like, we were, you know, like Mickey mouse, Walt Disney, cartoon time. This is something that's, you know, where young people play nothing serious happens.

[00:08:56] Nik: At the end of the three years, we were the most [00:09:00] recognized project in the city where I was based. We would get telephone calls from judges. We would get, we would be contacted regularly by the police. Uh, we were. Uh, being asked by every school in the city to work with their young people who were excluded, because we were seen as being the experts, the people that could actually get through to the young people and develop with them, or work on their personal social development.

[00:09:27] Nik: But it took a long time. And, um, and I think this is one of the issues that we have is that we're not a statutory body, like a school or social services or. The probation services or whatever, and it takes time for people to actually see the value of what is achieved in youth work. I think another reason is that we are generally really terrible at communicating about what we do.

[00:09:51] Nik: Um, I just recently wrote a blog about, um, nobody knows about youth work and, uh, [00:10:00] while, while I was writing it, I did a search on a Google search on what is youth work. And then I took the first line of that whole, of the page of Google, the first line of every, um, hit that came up and put it together into a paragraph, which I could understand.

[00:10:19] Nik: And I'm sure that people are very much involved in youth work would be able to understand, but the language was completely nonsensical. It was so full of code and, and, uh, and, and secret meanings that, yes, we all understand within the sector. But anybody outside doesn't have a clue. And I realized that this is the language I'm using.

[00:10:41] Nik: And, um, and I often get asked, you know, what is it that you do? I live in Montenegro now. Uh, and, and like Serbia. Um, this is still a fairly new concept. And often in a bar, someone will say, oh, you're you're what, what are you doing living here? And I said, well, actually I don't work in Montenegro. I work as a youth worker I work as a [00:11:00] trainer.

[00:11:00] Nik: And then I go into the spiel about youth work. And one of the last times this happened, the guy turned around to me and said, oh, so you control young people and tell them what to do. And I was just absolutely devastated. Say, no, you completely misunderstood everything. And a friend of mine who works in the bar was just laughing at me because he said, it's the same every time you just completely fail to explain what it is that you do in a way that anyone can understand.

[00:11:25] Nik: And I think this is one of the problems that we, uh, we, we use our own language, a language that we're familiar with to explain what we do, but that's not a language which is familiar to other people. Um, and I think this is, this is one of the reasons that we struggle for recognition. Yes.

[00:11:42] Darko: Well, actually we are very interesting combination

[00:11:44] Darko: Nik and me here because Nik comes from a country that youth work has a long tradition and Serbia basically didn't have country. Didn't have a country that didn't have youth work. Uh, we didn't have youth work. Basically since all till the [00:12:00] nineties, uh, of 20th century, maybe some Scouts would say, well, we existed before second world war.

[00:12:05] Darko: And then later we'd been expelled because of the communist ideology. If you look back historically, but, um, in, in the sense of professional field, yes, Serbia didn't have a youth work. Uh, like all the Balkan countries till the nineties. Or end of nineties last century. And going back to your question, Tanya, I think that's interesting because they, the answer cannot be the same for these two extreme realities.

[00:12:33] Darko: Like, uh, you have countries which, which actually have a long tradition of youth work and they have completely different recognition needs than countries that actually had a, let's say started from zero and started from scratch and starting building. Uh, understanding building practice, uh, also building recognition in a completely different way.

[00:12:55] Darko: Paradoxically sometimes gaining recognition. It was easier in this country. It's like [00:13:00] Serbia or Lithuania, or when youth work first started from zero then in countries like Belgium or UK or France or Italy, where there was lots of confusion there. And the thing is that we, when we speak about recognition, we don't speak about.

[00:13:14] Darko: One type of recognition in 1, 1, 1, 1, single answer to this question, because it's really question, uh, what kind of recognition do we have and what kind of recognition do we want? And it might be that in UK, for example, or Belgium, uh, Finland, for example, where youth work is a very well formally recognized.

[00:13:35] Darko: So you can find it in the qualification frameworks. More or less it is known. And then the question is what Nik was referring, but follow recognition doesn't mean necessarily a social recognition. So it doesn't mean that people really value this kind of, uh, this kind of practice. While, for example, in the Balkans we had cases that youth workers, did a great job.

[00:13:58] Darko: And I think Nik was part of these processes, [00:14:00] especially in some local communities because of having the impact there, they gained social recognition, but at the same time, they don't have a formal recognition. So there is no occupational profile or maybe they're just emerging nowadays, um, or being part of qualification framework.

[00:14:17] Darko: So lack of lack of formal recognition is, is, uh, is, is there. And, uh, maybe to come back to your question about how visible value. That you call library. And I was wondering if libraries may be too modest way to call the what, what visible library, uh, what visible value could be. Uh, and I, I was, um, also exploring in, in some of the projects I was involved, uh, how different recognition processes went in different countries, for example, in south med countries, uh, and in countries, which actually.

[00:14:55] Darko: Never had recognition of youth work and non- formal learning. And then for [00:15:00] example, this moment, when, when, when there is international encounter and they meet people from other countries where certain level of recognition is gained, this was almost like eyeopening. So, uh, it serves like, uh, like a big inspiration actually wandering actually understanding that this is actually possible.

[00:15:20] Darko: Yeah. I mean, maybe the different contexts, maybe it's different realities are there, but having sense that recognition is possible and practically, uh, it can look in a certain way. It can be a big trigger. For your own thinking about recognition in your context. So for me, if I think about the main value of visible value is actually inspiration.

[00:15:43] Darko: So inspiration for people to come to one place to learn about what recognition is or can be, but also to see all these practical ways, how this can be done and bring that back home and bring them back to their, their communities.

[00:15:57] Nik: Just want to come in on that point. Cause I think [00:16:00] that's, that's really important in terms of, of what the visible value is there, uh, what it can achieve.

[00:16:05] Nik: And, um, I mean, going back also to the original question is, is one of the difficulties of, of recognition. What I've found is, uh, Sorry, let's put this in context this time. We're developing stories, um, about, uh, my contribution to recognition from different, uh, people from, from the, from the sector and the, the greatest difficulty that we've experienced in getting these stories is that as, as a sector, we don't seem to recognize what is recognition.

[00:16:37] Nik: Every person that I've approached to provide a story has said, oh, I'm not involved in recognition. And then I've tried to explain with, or talk with them about, well, what is it you're doing? How is that affecting the community? And then they would go into this story and it's like, yes, exactly. This is recognition work.

[00:16:55] Nik: And it seems like we have this mentality. That recognition work is a [00:17:00] separate field, is something that someone else does on our behalf. In reality, nobody works in recognition in the youth sector directly, but everybody involved in the, in the youth sector is involved in recognition to some extent. And I think this is another issue that we have is that, uh, we, we, yeah, we have this vision that there is somebody out there there's a Tanya somewhere.

[00:17:23] Nik: Who, who does the recognition work? And no, it's not this, this is not correct. Yeah, there is no one, uh, it's all of us.

[00:17:32] Darko: And if I can build on that also maybe two sentences. One is, um, what I also learned, uh, along the way, uh, when we speak about recognition, we don't speak about recognition as a project. So it's a process.

[00:17:45] Darko: That's one thing. And if you think it has a process, it can be built in, in all the projects. So it's just a layer. It's not a separate thing. So you do youth work at that. You do recognition. No, it's just a layer in what you do. And I think this layer [00:18:00] requires certain awareness and I hope, uh, what Tanya was saying that, uh, the, the experts said that self recognition in the field or intra- sectorial, recognition is high.

[00:18:11] Darko: I hope so, but because this, this awareness of the value of the work that we do or that youth workers do. The basis of this, uh, this layer. And the second point is what I also learned that recognition is not an aim in itself. So it's not just aimed to get the gold medal there in the, to get a statue or to, you know, to get the nice diploma or whatever.

[00:18:35] Darko: Uh, there's a reason why. And what's the value of youth work that actually deserves recognition. And usually there, we speak about some social impact and the different reasons why youth workers all over Europe, uh, require and ask for recognition.

[00:18:51] Ismael: I think this is very interesting, what you were saying regarding the recognition being like an implicit consequence, let's say of general youth work in itself.

[00:18:58] Ismael: And I think Nik the example you gave at the [00:19:00] beginning of the story of the project you had in your hometown is a perfect example of that. Is that at the beginning of your whole goal was to have the young people there. And implicitly, let's say by doing that, you got the recognition of the whole town in itself.

[00:19:12] Ismael: So I think you're completely right when it comes to that being, um, an a consequence let's say not, not willingly, but again, it's another process that we all want to go through. Uh, when it comes to it, we have spoken a bit about the social recognition and the involvement, how it has evolved in the past 20 years, but a big issue with not being recognized as it is today is that for young people, it is extremely difficult to find a viable career

[00:19:33] Ismael: in youth work because it's not recognized as it should maybe on a political or a social level. Uh, what, w what would you say, let's say to a young person that wants to pursue a career in youth work, but then again, it's like musicians or artists. They keep telling them, oh, there's no future in that. Um, do you think there's a way to change that maybe with visible value or what, what, what, what would you tell him in person that really does want to do this as a vocational job?

[00:19:57] Ismael: Let's say for the rest of their lives.

[00:19:58] Nik: Yeah, I would go [00:20:00] back to a point that Darko made is, is it depends where you live. Uh, very, very much so. Um, if you're in the UK or in Finland, uh, countries like this, you know, it it's recognized as, uh, as a job, it's a profession. Uh, you can go to university, you can get a

[00:20:17] Nik: diploma or a degree you can, um, you can get into the youth work sector. It's not an easy job. It's nice. It's a really tough job. Uh, generally it pays quite badly. So, uh, yeah, as much as I would encourage a young person, I would also, um, want to open their eyes to the realities. Uh, it's a lot of hours. It's a lot of heartache sometimes.

[00:20:37] Nik: But, uh, yeah, the possibilities are there and I would really want to encourage young people, uh, any young person that's come through youth work and actually the majority of youth workers experienced youth work themselves, which is why they become youth workers. Um, so, uh, yeah, it it's, it's recycles itself in a sense in other countries and, and probably Darko

[00:20:56] Nik: will give more, more detailed description, [00:21:00] uh, Montenegro or, well, Serbia is a little bit different. It's more advanced let's say in terms of recognition, but in countries like Montenegro, there are some really good, uh, non-governmental organizations here who are working with young people. I think we still don't have recognition of youth work as a profession, but it is possible to find employment.

[00:21:20] Nik: And again, generally the people that you find employed in the youth organizations here in Montenegro are people that attended workshops or, or activities or youth exchanges, um, themselves as, as. All the teenagers or early twenties and then decided actually they wanted to give something back to society.

[00:21:39] Nik: Yeah. It's not easy, but it it's there. And the reality is that a lot of young people that, that get passionate about it often see the reality after some time and leave and that's all. Fine. And that's the same regardless of country it's, uh, but it's a really interesting, uh, job opportunity for many young people.

[00:21:59] Nik: [00:22:00] And I would always want to encourage anyone that's interested to go for it. A lot of people that she, that I worked with quite a number of years ago when I was doing, um, youth worker education, specifically in the Balkans, uh, we're going actually into social work, but they wanted to get a youth work background to support them

[00:22:17] Nik: as social workers, because they saw social work as something that, that didn't really care about young people. And they wanted to, uh, to, to really support young people. So they, they joined the youth work course so that they could get some kind of background to support their future work. Uh, so I, yeah, I'm not really answering your question now.

[00:22:35] Nik: I've gone off point but uh, I think there are possibilities, but it's not easy. Maybe

[00:22:41] Tanya: I would go back to. Wondering if we haven't fallen into a comfort zone of talking about recognition of youth work only in one way, seeing the visible patterns, seeing that in countries where there is formal education offered than youth work is better [00:23:00] recognized and so on.

[00:23:01] Tanya: And that's, that's true. Generally, you can see that in, you can see that in those countries youth work has been. Even more resilient and more better supported during COVID, uh, locked down and so on. But there is a lot of creativity and, uh, actually we had suggested for the youth youth work academy this year to present visible value there because.

[00:23:26] Tanya: Somehow it's in doing the ordinary that you find the extraordinary. So this innovation aspect of work on recognition, we can see it in the tools practices, and even in the way the countries talk about recognition. And that's what we try to put together in the. At least at this stage of the, of building the library, but most interesting, I think are the stories from the community of practice.

[00:23:53] Tanya: And it's something that will help us maybe find a better way [00:24:00] of looking at things and seeing nuances that we don't see now. Um, because I think right now we see what is the most visible. And for people who are on recognition as a process, probably it's regularly looking at all these projects and practices and tools and finding something and finding nuances that have not been explored.

[00:24:23] Tanya: And I think I hope that this library will bring that will keep those conversations up. I remember I talked to a, some Japanese researchers and they said, you know, what is this youth work? Because when I saw the declaration of the third convention, it seemed, it's a mix of everything. And it's true. If you look at the declaration, it's a mix of everything.

[00:24:44] Tanya: It's between a manifesto of grand objectives and very practical policy needs. Yeah. Training needs and so on. So I think that probably with time, we will learn to separate these [00:25:00] things and it will make it easier to bring youth work on career guidance programs in schools to actually highlight more of this motivation factor.

[00:25:10] Tanya: It is it's true that most youth workers. Most new youth workers come into the field for their personal experience. They have seen a champion. They loved the way that the dynamics, the energy the person brought and they want to be like that person. And that's how they get into it. It is the lack of long-term support that drives people out of the field, even as volunteering workers.

[00:25:37] Tanya: So hopefully there will be more focused on that in the future. And we'll be able to collect better stories about it.

[00:25:48] Darko: Talking about stories, uh, maybe not so much inspirational story from youth worker. Uh, the, for, I think it's quite interesting story about fighting for recognition itself and that concerns terminology [00:26:00] too, that we started today with an interestingly, even translating youth work in different languages is difficult thing.

[00:26:06] Darko: So we speak English now. So it goes fluently with a certain flow. But, but for example, we had a, there was a very turning moment. I think in Serbia was the moment when the Serbian government decided to draft the first law on youth and in the preamble of the, of the law on youth, there were two things. One was definition of non-formal education.

[00:26:28] Darko: And second was definition of youth work. In the end, they actually ended in the official text. And that was really speak about political recognition. One of the first let's say big turning points there probably it brought something to the field. It's another story, but what was a very important there, uh, as a fight to fight was that if you say youth work in Serbian, it sounds like youth labour..

[00:26:54] Darko: Because simply we don't have two words for, for, for work. We have just one. So it's, uh, we don't have a, [00:27:00] uh, like in English, different words for work and labor. And so we had to fight with the, uh, legal counselors or lawyers in the government who are responsible for these draft texts that actually term youth work can go into text and it won't mean youth labor.

[00:27:17] Darko: It would mean something else. So we will literally, we're fighting for the identity of the, of the new profession and we said, if social work can exist and nobody thinks about social labor, then youth, we can exist too. And it was quite a struggle, but in the end, in the end we won.

[00:27:34] Ismael: And with those motivational ending notes, we have reached an end to our episode.

[00:27:38] Ismael: Thank you very much, Nik and Darko for participating in this podcast and to all the listeners. Remember that you can find this online library on visible value in the bio and many other resources on our website. So don't forget to follow us on Instagram @eucoeyouth to stay up to date with all our future content. Thank you very much and see you next time.[00:28:00]