Welcome. On this page you’ll find some information about the team who created youthworkandyou.org. Each of the partner universities provides professional youth work education and training in their respective countries. As you scroll down the page, you’ll find a short video profile of each of the partner universities, Humak University of Applied Sciences, Maynooth University, Tallinn University, Ulster University and Victoria University. You can at any point, depending on where you are, contact the university and explore the options that might be available there for you.
As well as well as teaching and research each of us is connected into the wider youth work sector. We looked at that sector to support the development of these modules. Our starting point is that youth work organisations and universities engaged in youth work education can support each other, can work together, can learn from each other to promote and sustain quality youth work.
The Team
The team worked together for over 2 years, meeting and talking and talking and meeting, sharing ideas and exploring what is involved in creating an e-learning website. The YWeLP team is made up from of people from each of the universities who then in turn worked with other people in the university and in the sector to explore the ideas, to collaborate and to create each one of the modules and constituent units. Each partner took a lead on a module and collaborated with another member of the team on their module. This approach gave us with an opportunity to learn together and to develop our own insights and expertise in an area that we were interested in exploring more deeply.
Youth Work Principles
Youth work is in an international practice and while the issues facing young people will change, the contexts will change and our responses to those contexts will change, the principles on which youth work is based remain stable. These principles include the primacy of relationship and educational processes based on voluntary participation, working in ways that are enabling and empowering and promoting young people’s capacity for agency not just in their own but in those communities lives. The ‘word cloud’ below summarises the YWeLP team’s perspective on youth work.
Youth Work is ….
Quality Youth Work
Youthworkandyou.org contributes to quality youth work by providing youth workers (voluntary, paid or students) with access to e-learning materials to promote their capacity to engage effectively with young people. As Carmel (in one of the videos you’ll see), says we need to empower youth workers in the same way that they empower young people – our intent is that youth workers find engaging with this material an empowering experience which in turn has positive consequences for young people. The ‘word cloud’ below summarises the YWeLP team’s perspective on youth workers.
Youth Workers are ….
The YWeLP team is committed to supporting a youth work ‘community of practice’ dedicated to the development of quality youth work not just another individual countries, not even in Europe but around the world.
Partner Universities Profiles
Check out these short 2 minute videos to learn a little about the partners.