Meeting and Job Shadowing of Rural Youth Workers

A Meeting of Rural Youth Workers

Are you doing daily work with young people in rural areas? A lot of European young people live in rural settings, in small villages and towns and you may be a person, who organises activities, open houses or hobby groups to them. This event will help you to meet others who do a similar job.

With this activity you can

• explore and compare what youth work is like in rural settings in Europe
• get to know how youth work is organised in small municipalities in Finland
• get a practical experience on what youth work is like on local level
• get information about the opportunities of EU’s Youth Programmes
• get ideas for future projects and partnerships

Rural setting

Rural areas in Europe can be very different, but they also share a lot of same kind of qualities – long distances, few young people, fewer services, education, and job opportunities. But rural youth workers can also bring a lot of opportunities to the young people in their area. This event gives you a taste in Finnish youth work.

In the event you will understand what is considered big or small in different countries and how different challenges have been resolved. You see a selection of practices that you can steal and modify to your needs.

A Practical Experience

In the programme you have the possibility to travel to different size municipalities in Lapland and see how the municipality organises daily youth work. You will work alongside a Finnish youth worker in their hometown or village for a full day.

You will travel to the locality with a Finnish youth worker who will present you the local youth work. You can choose your place from 10 municipalities of different sizes – from 60 000 inhabitants in the regional centre to a village of 950 people.

Regardless of the size, every municipality will have similar services for young people. You see same approaches from different viewpoints. Google the 10 municipalities to find out more where they are and how big they are: Rovaniemi, Ranua, Kemi, Keminmaa, Tornio, Savukoski, Pelkosenniemi, Sodankylä, Kittilä and Kolari.

Who is a Rural Youth Worker?

If you organise regular activities to young people on local level professionally, semi-professionally or as an active volunteer, you can apply. You can represent a municipal youth service or an NGO, but you should work in an organisation that works actively with young people. You should be legally an adult.

We hope you will come from a place that is not bigger than 60 000 inhabitants. We especially encourage you to apply if you come from little villages and very small towns.

How to apply?

You can apply by filling in the electronic application here on the SALTO pages.

If coming with another person from your organisation or locality helps you to participate better, we may be able to support two people from the same place. In that case one participant makes the application with their MySALTO profile and adds the information of the second person in the same application.

A Week-long Event

You should arrange your arrival to Rovaniemi on Monday May 22. You can go home earliest on Saturday May 27. We only accept participants who can attend the whole event.

If you are selected, the National Agency in your country will tell you how to organise your travel and how the practicalities go. We will take care of your accommodation in single rooms and organise all meals, transport and support during the event.

Small steps for a better world

In our activities we support the principle of a safer space, where no one is discriminated or bullied because of their background or person. We want you to respect the same principle.

We want to enable the participation of people different of abilities. Unfortunately, all the job shadowing places are not accessible, but we can find you a place which is. We also take care of other personal needs, if you tell us about them in beforehand.

We also strive to make the world a little bit greener. This is why we are primarily choosing vegetarian or otherwise sustainable diets whenever possible. We also encourage you to think if you will make some part of your trip on land - in your own country or in Finland.