The YWDT is a step-by-step guide to youth work development, starting from where you are, taking you to where you want to go!
Its primary function is to support organisations providing youth work, but it can also be used by, for example, young people or politicians to assess the youth work provided or to get material for discussions or advocacy.
Please click the Find support button below to know more.
The Youth Work Development Toolkit takes you through a five-step process, supporting you in structuring your development efforts.
You find these steps under each bullet point in the Charter.
The first, preparatory, step is therefore to go through the Charter and decide on which bullet point(s) you want to work with. You can have your process related to only one, some or all of them, and you can run as many processes as you wish.
You find the charter, its five chapters and bullet points below. Each chapter has a short introductory film – listen to it before you take the next step.
You can then click on the various bullet points. Each bullet point has a short introductory text followed by questions to discuss in order to find out if this is something that you need to develop or not.
If you already know that this is something you will need to work on, you can save these discussions till you have started your process. They will show on your project page and here you can also take notes.
If you think that this is something you need to work on, click the “Add to development agenda” button. You will find your agenda on your personal page, from where you will start your development process(es).
Below the questions to discuss you will also find some references and tips. These you will also, together with other support material, find when you click the Find support button.
To start a development process, you need to create an account. This enables you to save everything you do on the page. You own your own information, and EGL will only be able to see statistics on national level.
When you have created an account, you can go to your personal page and start a process. First you name your process. Then you choose the bullet points you want to work with by going to the various chapters and click on them or choose them from your development agenda.
When you have done this, it is time to take the first step!
The first step aims at creating a common understanding of the current state of play.
It contains two different parts:
These can be used independently or in various combinations and orders.
Through the assessment function you get a link and a QR-code to a survey that you can make accessible any way you want. Through the survey the respondents rate to which degree they think that the assessed youth work meets the bullet point(s).
The survey is preferably to be answered individually, so that you can trace differences in experiences, but can also be answered by groups. All bullet points that you have chosen for your process will be included in the survey.
Your first step might therefore be to do a broad survey to all stakeholders concerned, or you can ask a specific group, e.g. young people or a group of youth workers to see how they look at things. When the assessment is done you can download and analyse the result
Another way is to start with the questions to discuss. These are divided into two sets. The first one is specific to the bullet point and helps you to see it from various perspectives and to create of common understanding of what it actually means. The second one helps you to see how well you think youth work lives up to it. You can take notes related to each discussion.
When you have done and analysed the assessment and/or discussed the various questions it is time to take the next step. If you don’t think you need to work more on this, you can start another process containing some other bullet points.
After having created a common understanding of what needs to be developed, the next step is to describe how things should be when the development process is done – to set objectives for development. The more thorough you are, the more concrete and detailed you manage to be when you describe how things should be/work/look like when you are done, the easier it will be to take the next steps. If possible, try to describe the future in a list of bullet points. This will make it possible to link each of them to the concrete actions you will need to take in order to get to where you want to be.
The third step is to decide on what you need to acquire/develop/change in order to get to where you want to be. You might lack necessary knowledge, methods or competencies to realize your ideas for the future, and/or you might have to make changes in budget or organisation. In this step you specify your various needs. You will need to formulate your various needs before going to the Take actions page. You can always add new needs to the list.
Here you describe, as detailed as possible, what needs to be done, who is responsible and when it is to be done. When you have turned all your various needs in to actions you will automatically have a complete action plan.
If you need assistance in carrying out one or more actions, you can send an email to ywdt@jint.be. Download and attach your project notes and describe in what way we can assist you.
After that you have had your development process you should of course do a follow up of the process and its outcomes. One good way to do this is to send out a new assessment survey to see if things have improved!
Download the user manual here.
By creating an account you will be able to use the YWDT for various processes and save your work
Download the Charter and read about the background
Here you will find:
Europe Goes Local hosted by JINT vzw
Grétrystraat 26, 1000 Brussels, Belgium
Tel. +32 2 209 07 20
europegoeslocal@jint.be
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