As a youth worker, I am constantly seeking out new ways to enhance my skills and knowledge in order to better support the young people I work with. That’s why I was excited to discover an educational practice platform, the YOUreSTART platform, for youth workers that promised to offer valuable insights and resources.
While I was searching through the platform, I discovered the section “Mapping”. This section suggests places with a cultural initiative in the partner countries of the project. Because I’m living and working as a YW in Patras, this helps me re-discover or get to know places in my area where we can go with young people and see art exhibitions, performances etc.
The next thing that caught my eye is the section “Toolkit “. There, you can find specific tools that partner countries have gathered and suggest using in our initiatives. If I had a programme that was about working with the community and bringing young people and older residents together, I would use the tool “Making your Zine” . This will bring different generations together by connecting them through art and creativity.
Let’s talk about “wiki”. In that section, many words are being defined from experience and definitions are more reader-friendly and easier to make connections with the experience of each individual. We have a running project right now and we are in charge of making some workshops. The platform would be very helpful in this case because we also want to define the words from the experience of the participants. By reading the words and their meanings and the visual aids- references from the platform is a useful guideline to act on.
Last but not least, the “Repository” section. There is a vast amount of information and examples from real life for us YWs to get inspired for our future endeavors. And because one of the partner countries is mine as well, it’s a great opportunity to get information for upcoming events to be a part of. These event proposals -due to the nature of the platform- are most certain to attract more YWs and young audiences.
In conclusion, the emergence of platforms that connect youth workers and enable them to share their practices, like the YOUreSTART one, has been a game-changer in the youth work sector. The ability to connect and collaborate with colleagues from around the world has provided us with access to a wealth of knowledge and experience that can be used to improve our own practices. Lastly, the use of the YOUreSTART platform can help to create a more cohesive and connected community of youth workers who can support and learn from one another.
Written by Nefeli Katsouli