We’ve interviewed Werner Prinzjakowitsch about the project Youth in Urban Space before. In this latest “Faces of EGL”, we get to know Werner better.
Werner started his youth work journey a long time ago in a volunteer youth organisation and then decided to make a job out of it.
He’s an educated Social Worker (BA) and holds a Masters in Social and Health Care Management. Later, he attended the Performance Measurement Course for Non-Profits at Harvard Business School.
Werner has been active in professional youth work since 1984. He has worked in different youth centres as a director in Vienna since 1988. In 2008, he became Educational Director of Association of Viennese Youth Centres, a non-profit with 300 employees and 36 units. Apart from supervising the units, he’s encouraging specific activities in political education, youth participation, integration and diversity, and international relations. Werner is an acting trainer in Conflict Management, Youth Participation, Participative Methodology, Intercultural Learning, and Prevention of Extremism.
In this position he’s also supervising and leading youth related research projects, the Erasmus+ strategic partnership “Youth in Urban Space” being the latest of it.
Furthermore, he’s a member of the Austrian Federal Network “Deradicalisation and Prevention of Extremism”, and a member of the Steering Committee of the Austrian Extremism Information Centre. Within the EU RAN network (run by DG Home Affairs) he currently acts as an expert on youth related topics and chaired the international RAN working group on “Youth, Families and Communities” (YFC) from 2016-2020.
Werner has three children, two of them already adults with their own children. He’s interested in politics, both on national and international level, he relaxes with music and sometimes he reconnects with his youth hobby playing drums. He enjoys nature and hiking and a somewhat unusual activity for a youth worker: the golf course.
Werner Prinzjakowitsch
Educational Director of the Association of Viennese Youth Centres