The Europe Goes Local network and its coordinating National Agency, JINT vzw (Belgium-Flanders) organised the European Training Course for Charter Ambassadors. The event took place from 1 to 4 March 2022 in Brussels, Belgium.
The participants were stakeholders in local youth worker. They became Charter Ambassadors through this training course. We equipped them during the week with tools and methods to improve their youth work in their local realities and municipalities, and beyond.
The week was very busy. Of course the participants learned about the European Charter on Local Youth Work and the Changemakers Kit and how to use it. Furthermore, they were able to learn from each other and work together, they learned more about European policies, and a lot more.
We also organised two webinars that was open to everyone to kickstart the training course. The first webinar was about Quality Youth Work in general. The second webinar was more concrete: we dove into the Changemakers Kit. These webinars happened during the last months of 2021.
We made a video summary that you can watch below.
We interviewed several Charter Ambassadors during the training course. Our first interview was with Charter Ambassador Ena Peeva.
“When I think about local youth work, the very first thing that comes to mind is meaningful engagement and dialogue between all stakeholders”, says Ena. She wants to create a network where all stakeholders can sit around the table together to discuss local youth work from different perspectives. Ena wants to do this while “including everyone and including everyone’s needs”. You can watch her interview here.
We will add more interviews to our website and social media later.
Our photographer Freedom Agyemang made a beautiful photo report of the training course. You can already see a couple of pictures here. We also posted more pictures to our Facebook page.
The European Charter on Local Youth Work was launched in June 2019 as “a common European platform for the necessary dialogue on youth work”. The Charter is not a political document, but “a check-list around which stakeholders can gather and discuss what measures that might be needed for the further development of youth work”. In order for this dialogue to be carried out in a constructive way, the steering group of Europe Goes Local (EGL) also developed an online Changemakers Kit (CMK), containing different kinds of support material such as guiding questions and examples of good practices.
The Charter has met very positive reactions throughout the youth work community of practice. Worth noting is also that the development of the Charter goes hand in hand with last year’s policy development. In the declaration from the 3rd European Youth Work Convention, Signposts for the future, the Charter is explicitly mentioned as an important tool for the quality development of youth work. Therefore, the work within EGL and supporting the implementation of the Charter will be an important contribution to the Bonn process.
You can find the call for participants here.