Already somewhere in the middle of the training course we are interested
to hear the story of Rumbi who comes from the organisation African Youth Arise (AYA) from the United Kingdom. With her we had
small interview, asking her about the learning points from the day 4 of YOUTHIFICATION
training. The methodology used during this day was focusing more on creative
expression and building 3D structures which should visualize better the youth
structures the participants are working in. Questions like: where are the young
people in your community? How much do they participate in the decision making
processes? How to increase their participation? Read here below what Rumbi said
to us:
"At the morning session I was thinking more thoroughly about our
space that we use for our activities, is it appropriate and suitable for the
young people we are working with. I think probably is not, it doesn’t have
enough facilities to enable us to work with young people on another level and
to encourage the level of participation within our organisation. For the moment
I think our youth structure is serving the purpose but if we want to grow,
because we are only a start-up, we have to rethink where we going to meet, the
facilities we are going to require. From talking with the colleagues here and
seeing what they are doing, it made me really think that I have to review what
we are doing. We are delivering really good programme, many workshops,
currently we are working on employability workshop, where we enable young
people and encourage them to explore their identity. The next one will be
decision-making and it is really important as young person to be able to be supported
when making decisions but also as young people to take ownership on their
decisions. As an organisation we need to be able to take the right decisions
that will enable young people to expand their opportunities.
So I listed most of the things we required in my organisation after
being inspired from other colleagues from other organisations around Europe. I
loved the building the community structure as well, it made me really think
about the barriers that are stopping the young people to participate. It was
very good to work in the group, work with completely different set of people, find
out what they do, what their strengths are what their weaknesses are. Interestingly,
what could be considered as strength in one organisation, or in one country, could
be a weakness in another country.
I work on one national programme in the UK, but we are not referring at
all to manuals like the Council of Europe’s one presented within the session
today (the RMSOS – Rights, Means, Space, Opportunity, Support). Elements of it,
of course are present like: support, participation, the space, but again it
made me think of certain things that currently we are not doing within the
organisation and we should really think about integrating in our work, like the
core management structure, to enable young people to make decisions.
I am all about building partnership and working together with the
stakeholders connected with young people, like the parents, who are the major
stakeholder in the life of the young person. For example, if they belong to a
religious group, we need to have the religious leaders on board, we also need
the schools to be on board. We want to give the necessary support to the young
people that will facilitate better their active participation.
Other really interesting thing that I learned today, as a person from
UK, when hearing the other youth workers here speaking about the challenges
they face, I realized how different those changes are from the ones that we have
in UK. Like for example, we do not have to push so much the youth agenda in the
UK because it is already set. So that’s why I think we need to support each
other. I am really inspired from my colleagues from the Balkan region, because
they are working under very difficult conditions, but still pushing the youth
agenda. That really made me want to visit the region and see the work they are
doing. Looking forward to that.”
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