Youth workers and business managers sharing skills and expertise to increase community resilience to declining resources

As the UK’s local public sector continues to shrink as a result of national Government attempts to reduce the national debt, public sector investment in community work and youth provision in particular continues to decline ever more sharply, a trend set to continue for the foreseeable future. As a support NGO, we are working with our voluntary sector in south London to help them meet this challenge, finding new ways to deliver youth work, fill the gaps appearing as public sector youth work declines or ceases, secure alternative resources and adopt cheaper more efficient techniques for managing youth club record-keeping and general administration. We are keen to share ideas and new technological tools as well as learn from other EU countries how they are tackling these types of challenges. We envisage running a series of youth worker mobility activities to support this. These will also provide our local voluntary sector youth workers with increased opportunities to achieve formal, accredited, London-wide recognised youth work qualifications.