Three organizations based in North Macedonia (Go Green Skopje), Germany (Natur Kultur e.V.) and Croatia (Ocean Znanja u Republici Hrvatskoj) took part in an Erasmus+ K2 strategic partnership called “A step between”.
This project is an actual step between between two projects which strongly advocate, promote and address the challenges in Youthwork, aiming to create better competences for the youth workers to do their job, but also better and safer working environment. Quality of youth work is one of the most important priorities in the program and this project is addressing it in a very direct way.
The project is a continuation based on the conclusions and recommendations of the “White paper on Youth Work” published in September 2018. The White Paper clearly outlines the need for improving the work conditions and well-being of youth workers and their lack of representation in front of the relevant European institutions and policy makers. This project enabled us to make an assessment and map the EU (Brussels) landscape related to youth workers. The reports provided us with relevant information on the relevant institutions, organizations, legislation, policies, and on the other hand provided information on the youth workers well-being and needs. These information (reports) will serve in the future as basis for a larger follow up project (KA2) discussed with the German National Agency for opening an office in Brussels for representation of the youth workers and youth grass-root organizations in front of the relevant institutions.
That is why the name of this project is “A step between” because it symbolically communicates the need to gather all this information and create the critical group of youth workers, experts and policy makers relevant for making positive change. The project is innovative at its core, because there is no similar approach to addressing this issue, this is a process coming from grass root organizations, and based on firm research and white paper where all three organizations are the leading team. Supporting this project brought us one step closer to the holistic, inclusive, fact-based process of youth workers representation in Brussels.
The project results are reports that will give to all concerned stakeholders (NGOs, National Agencies, Policy makers) relevant information that they can base their decision making on and they can base their future policies on.
“Legislation pinpointing for youth work” by Go Green – Skopje, North Macedonia
“Youth Work Ecosystems” by NaturKultur e.V. – Bremen, Germany
Wellbeing of youthworkers by Ocean Znanja u Republici Hrvatskoj – Zagreb, Croatia
The Croatian report was done by two young researchers based in Croatia – Kruno Topolski and Marija Jukić.