Passage from Youth Work to new Careers

Having been involved in the European youth work for more than a decade now, we are aware how healthy it is to pause from time to time and question our professional status quo. Usually we are those who push young people for reflection, self-assessment and action planning, but do we practice what we preach? Do we have enough entrepreneurial spirit that we should share with young people? We all have acquired a valuable set of skills during youth work and Erasmus+ projects, but it might be that we want to make a change in our careers. The drivers for this might vary: specific needs of young people we work with, our family situations, need for economic sustainability, ambition, looking for new challenges. The question is: how to valorize our skills and make our experiences visible and transferable to other sectors (e.g. research, career guidance,) so that we could also advocate for the development of youth work and youth policy. Therefore we provide to interested youth workers and trainers (voluntary or paid) with essential entrepreneurial knowledge and skills. This training course will engage you in: • a process of professional self-reflection to validate your experiences and skills/competence • a creative design of your professional future, based on own competences (e.g. specialization in one of the methodologies) • developing business ideas, entrepreneurial initiatives and partnerships that you will be able to share with young people • create new projects with Erasmus+ in the field of youth work. We want to ensure a cozy and secure environment for personal exchange and we will only work with a group of max. 20 participants. The training will, next to a few plenary moments, mostly alternate between work in small peer groups and individual mentoring. The training course is based on self-directed learning approach: participants will relate to their experiences and share them with their co-learners. After each step they will be empowered to look at the process from meta-level and reflect what can be directly transferred to youth work. Therefore specific time will be devoted for designing their new entrepreneurial action with Design Thinking, as well as to develop new projects on local and international level. The participants will be guided during this week by experienced trainers who themselves shifted their careers after a long-standing experience in international youth work.