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Developing and Communicating the Impact of Youth Work across Europe
Start date: Feb 1, 2016, End date: Aug 31, 2018 PROJECT  FINISHED 

This is a unique project which simultaneously both develops and communicates the impact of youth work across 5 European countries (United Kingdom [lead partner], France, Italy, Finland, Estonia). It is the first project of its type to do this. It utilizes a recently devised method for this process - Transformative Evaluation (TE) - which in the UK context has been shown to both significantly develop youth worker's ability to demonstrate impact, re-engage youth workers in the evaluation process and develop high quality youth work. It focuses on 'story generation' and starts with the voice of young people. This is enhanced through a process of peer and stake holder discussions to establish definitely the impact of youth work in that context. The context for this project is the Europe-wide call for youth work to better establish its outcomes and impact (EC, Strategy for Youth, 2009; EC, 2014, Working with Young People; EC, 2015, Quality Youth Work). The outcomes of the project ( national partner country reports, E-book and briefing papers will be used to address this directly.The aims of this project are:1.To establish a European network to identify, develop and communicate the impact of youth work across 5 European countries. The objectives of the project are:2. To embed the innovative, highly effective, robust and sustainable method of evaluating youth work - Transformative Evaluation (TE) - developed in one national context (UK) in youth work organizations across 5 European partner countries. 3. Demonstrate new knowledge and evidence across Europe of the impact of youth work to inform local regional, national and European Policy.These aims will be met by the following objectives:(i) Training youth workers in the Transformative Evaluation (TE) method and then implementing 3 cycles of the process in 3 youth work organizations, in each of the 5 partner countries, over a one year period.(ii) Youth workers from these organizations supported by the coordinators will train other youth workers across their organization, and in other youth work organizations and settings, thereby developing a new 'community of practice'.(iii) Create a sustainable on-line training resource in TE to enable youth workers across Europe settings to be better able to evaluate their practice, and identify the impact of their work.(iv) identifying, comparing and contrasting the impact of youth work on young people and upon their wider communities across the 15 youth work settings in 5 European contexts.(v) Identifying what works, the processes which brought about these outcomes and how they were achieved. (vi) Communicate and disseminate this new knowledge via reports, policy briefings and an open access e-book(vii) Produce recommendations for policy makers / funders.(viii) Disseminate outputs through an International Conference.The project will have 5 phases1) Training in TE2) Embedding TE in youth work organizations3) Identification of the Impact of Youth Work 4) Establishment of a new 'Community of Practice' & Production of a web based multi lingual resource 5) Dissemination through Reports, E-book and international conference The project is lead by Dr Jon Ord (University of St Mark & St John) Associate Professor in youth work and there are 4 other universities, of HUMAK, Toulouse, Bari, Tallin coordinating the work in their native countries. There also 15 partner youth work organizations, 3 from each of the 5 countries. Many of these are from deprived regions such as Cornwall, in the UK and Puglia in Italy. The project will be expanded as youth workers share and train other youth workers through peer to peer training to significantly extend the reach of the project, creating a 'Community of Practice'.The results will be:- A significant demonstration of the impact of youth work across Europe. - The establishment of a 'community of Practice of youth workers trained in to demonstrate the impact of their work (TE)- The project has a sustainable paradigm as it is designed to grow and develop after it has been completed through the production of the Multi lingual Web based resource, the E-book and the community of practice that has been developed. The project involves Southern, Western and Northern Europe as well as a Baltic state. Each coordinating partner, in each country is a leading organization in their national context. The project has key figures involved in it, including the ex-director of the Directorate of Youth & Sport at the European Commission, from Finland. Each partner brings a different context and a diverse range of youth work experience and expertise and the outcomes and outputs of the project will be fascinating, as this will be the first project of its type to compare and contrast youth work approaches and collate both the most significant changes for young people through their engagement in open access youth work, and the youth work processes which brought them about.
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