European Academy on Youth Work event, 3rd edition

What is the European Academy on Youth Work (EAYW)?

The EAYW aims to promote the development of quality youth work and to support its capacity to react to current and future developments. To this end, it focuses on supporting innovation in youth work, as a response to the trends, challenges and uncertainties faced by young people in today’s fast-changing societies.

The EAYW offers a platform for reflection, exchange and knowledge gathering on trends and developments in and with relevance to the youth field in Europe, and on innovative youth work responses to these trends and developments. In this way, it contributes to a European youth work ecosystem that supports quality development and innovation in youth work.

The EAYW responds to the demands expressed in the final Declaration of the 3rd European Youth Work Convention to encourage and support the different stakeholders in youth work in Europe to strive “towards the maintenance of the good structures and practices that already exist, their development when the need arises, and the space for innovation in our thinking, our organisation and our practices”. [1]

The EAYW is a strategic cooperation of National Agencies of the Erasmus+ programme, youth field, and the European Solidarity Corps [2] and SALTO-YOUTH Resource Centres. 

More information: www.eayw.net.

About the third EAYW event

The 3rd EAYW will take place from 14 - 17 May 2024 in Kranjska Gora, Slovenia. Participants are expected to arrive on the 14th, the official start of the EAYW is foreseen for late afternoon. The programme will run until lunch on 17 May.

The 3rd EAYW event follows the successful first two editions, which were organised in May 2019 and May 2022 in Kranjska Gora, Slovenia, and brought together around 170 professionals from youth work practice, research, policy and related fields, including institutions supporting youth work at different levels. Following a call for proposals, around 30 innovative practices in and related to youth work were presented and discussed with reference to innovation and their links to current and future trends and developments.

The 3rd EAYW also builds on the outcomes of two studies undertaken in the framework of the EAYW:

• Study on Innovation in Youth Work (2021)
• Futures of Youth Work – a collaborative research project using foresight methodology to develop future scenarios of youth work (ongoing)

The specific objectives of the 3rd EAYW are to support knowledge-building, peer learning and networking to:

• Jointly explore emerging trends and future developments and discuss their possible impact on youth work;
• Showcase and mainstream a variety of innovative practices, approaches and strategies developed in response to these developments and
• Foster networking and innovative thinking about the futures of youth work within the community.

The EAYW aims to be inclusive and participatory in its approach and to give a voice to contributions representing the diverse levels, environments and stakeholders in youth work. Reflection based on different perspectives should help to identify responses to trends that could be taken up by different roles.

Programme

Key features should include:

• Workshops based on presentations of innovative practices, which will be selected in the frame of a public call;
• Inspiring inputs and discussions of key questions related to innovation, current and future trends and developments, which should help to address the needs of youth work in different environments and build the capacities for innovative approaches of the participants and their organisations;
• Presentation of the EAYW research: Futures of Youth Work - Potential Future Scenarios and validation of the research outcomes by the participants;
• Inviting spaces for community-building, networking and joint reflection about futures of youth work;
• Useful outcomes of the discussions and suggestions for follow up that can help to build the knowledge and capacities of the youth work field to respond to new needs and developments.

More concretely, during the 3-day programme, participants will be able to attend Workshops (Practice & Reflection Forums) of their choice, where they will have the opportunity to explore innovative examples of practice from different fields and contexts of youth work, research and policy and addressing a variety of themes and target groups.

The practice examples will be responses to societal challenges, youth-related trends or future developments and that support quality and forward-looking developments in youth work and related fields. The themes and emerging trends addressed will include, e.g., climate and sustainability, accessibility & inclusivity of youth work, civic participation, education, training and competence-building of youth workers and trainers, recognition of youth work, technology and AI in youth work, young people’s social behaviour & lifestyles, promoting innovation in youth work, support for considering the future, influences from other fields and new approaches to thinking about youth work.  (A public call for contributions is open in parallel to this call for participants.)

Some of these practice and reflection forums will be spaces for presentation and discussion, others might offer a more hands-on, experiential or experimental approach.

Key notes, debates and inspirational inputs will offer further sparks for reflection on questions, such as:

• How can we get ready for future thinking?
• How can we act, plan and envision for a future we don’t know?  
• How can we move youth work forward?

At the end of each day, participants can reflect in smaller learning groups on what they experienced during the day and what actions might be needed to take youth work further.

Finally, it is also important and fun to feel and get a glimpse of what innovation is all about, so there will be informal spaces for sharing, experimenting and seeing things from a different perspective…

You can find the programme overview HERE.

Profile of participants

The EAYW targets experienced youth workers and representatives of NGOs as well as professionals in areas with relevance for the youth sector, such as: representatives of youth work policies and public services, National Agencies and other youth work structures, trainers and educators in the field of youth work (education) and other professionals from related fields of science and research. Geographically, the EAYW addresses stakeholders from the broader European context, including Europe’s neighbouring countries South of the Mediterranean.

Participants should have a keen interest in learning about and contributing to new and innovative initiatives and developments, in order to further develop youth work or frameworks for youth work in their own context.

[1] Final Declaration of the 3rd European Youth Work Convention, Signposts for the Future (Bonn, 10 December 2020)

[2] National Agencies of Austria, Belgium-FL, Croatia, Cyprus, Denmark, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Portugal, Slovenia and Sweden.