The organisation and practice of local youth work needs …

to stimulate and support young people to meet over all kinds of barriers and borders in order to socialise, exchange experiences and ideas, organise, learn from each other and take action.

Personal and social development is closely linked to meeting people with other backgrounds and ideas than your own. Through meeting others, you broaden your horizons and get to understand not only others, but also yourself, better. The active inclusion of different groups into youth work is therefore beneficial for everybody involved.

Discuss & assess
Here you find the questions you need to ask yourself to know if you need to develop and the assessment function
Set objectives
Here you describe what you want to achieve.
Needs
Here you describe what you need to acquire, develop or change.
Actions to take
Here you describe the actions you plan to take.

Remember! Development is far from always a linear process! It needs to start with discussions, but the first ‘Action to take’ might be to gather more knowledge before setting aims for development and deciding on further actions to take. Dare to be both flexible and to take one step back before taking two steps forward!

References & tips

Embracing diversity. An introduction to diversity management in youth work.
SALTO-Youth inclusion resource center, 2017