MOVIT organized the “Why, What, Who and How in Youth Work” Training on the 17th and 18th of June 2021 in Ljubljana (Slovenia). MOVIT is one of the leading Slovenian organizations dealing with youth policies and projects and stimulating the mobility of young people in the field of non-formal education and culture. As an activity under Europe Goes Local project, 18 participants from 17 municipalities in Slovenia attended the training.* The participants included civil servants working in the youth field as well as local politicians in municipal administrations.
The training aimed to be an open and safe space. Participants worked on core principles that ensure a quality approach when organizing youth work and activities at the local level. Some of the focussed topics included understanding youth and youth’s needs of today, current mechanisms in Slovenia that support youth work at different levels as well as expanding knowledge on the European dimension of youth work by reviewing European documents and processes that further enhance the quality of local-level youth work. Katarina Gorenc, head of the Youth Office of Ljubljana, shared information on how youth work in the city is regulated, and presented important insights on how to utilize and work with the European Charter on Local Youth Work.
One participant said: ‘The training confirmed that we’re not alone, but we have institutions that help municipalities achieve their desired goals.’ Another participant expressed that ‘the training was carried out flawlessly, both organizationally and in terms of content. I’ve received a lot of information and guidance for further work. I found the way of working with participants extremely interesting and effective. All the lecturers presented the content in an extremely interesting way – my attention was almost entirely 100% the whole time.’
All participants committed to work together and identified ways to support their future work at the end of the training.
* The municipalities that took part were: Semič, Ivančna Gorica, Rogatec, Miren-Kostanjevica, Šentjur, Postojna, Tolmin, Sežana, Jesenice, Cerkno, Slovenska Bistrica, Celje, Ljubljana, Škofja Loka, Ptuj, Brežice, and Črnomelj.
* You can read more about this event in Slovenian here.
As a European platform for cooperation, one of Europe Goes Local’s missions is to strengthen the youth work community of practice at the local level. With the European Charter and our tools, we aim to enhance and contribute to the further development of quality local youth work, together with our National Agencies, municipalities, and local youth work actors.
In this serie, we introduce how the principles of Europe Goes Local and the European Charter enrich, express and apply at the local level through various activities and good practices. We selected a number of local events shared by our National Agencies and local municipalities that bring forward creative and original ways to strengthen local youth work and elevate the collaboration, dialogue, and peer-learning throughout the youth work community of practice.