Boot camp for Nordic Youth Workers

The project Boot camp for Nordic Youth Workers was born in an Erasmus+ project in June 2015 where FFF and Fritidsforum met members from Forendring i Norden and Setlementti and introduced their organizations and projects. What the organizations learned from one another was how Nordic youth work is mostly built around similar principals and is facing similar problems. An idea was born to bring together experienced youth workers and researchers to create some common solutions which could be implemented in all the Nordic countries to increase quality and synchronize methods to validate youth work. The goal of the project was to get experienced youth workers, organizations and researchers to gather best practices, knowledge and experience to create a basic training seminar for youth workers, a validation tool for non-formal learning and a handbook that gathers the ideology behind the seminar, the methods and information about the validation tool. There were four participant organizations in the project that all have experience in international projects and trainings. The organizations all work with empowering youth workers to add quality to youth work in their home countries. The project took place over three years and included national and international meetings and workshops. The project results included:- A basic training seminar work youth workers - A interactive validation tool for participation and non-formal learning which is built upon the ideology of gaming - A handbook that maps up all the ideology and methods in the seminar as well as time management for the seminar and the tools needed - A international conference for youth workers where the project results were presented. The impact of the projects has yet to be seen fully but now that we are finishing our project there is great anticipation from the partner organizations and other partners from all over Europe who have received a presentation on the project results. We hope that in the coming years the intellectual outputs from the Bootcamp project will increase the quality of youth work in the Nordic countries and promote the Nordic methods in Europe and the entire world.