What is Youth Work?

Every time someone asked me what I was majoring in I would respond to them Youth Development. I was one of those students who did not know how to explain what my major was or technically where I can go with it within the field. My simple answer use to be "it is almost like education, but technically I will not be certified to teach in a school." Then most people would understand what I was doing. In one of my Youth Development classes we actually made an elevator speech in how to explain to the people what Youth Development is, honestly I do not remember my elevator pitch. Reading this article, Youth Work by Jason Wood, Sue Westwood, and Gill Thompson turn a light bulb on for me. In the article it stated The English National Occupational Standards define youth work as "Enabling young people to develop holistically, working with them to facilitate their personal, social and educational development, to enable them to develop their voice, influence and place in society and to reach their full potential." I thought to myself wow, that was a simple and cut to the chase answer, but then there is more to youth work than that simple answer. There are many characteristics of Youth Work.

The professor told us to speak about the seven characteristics of youth work. Some of the characteristics the article speaks about is educational practice, social practice, welfare practice, actively challenging inequality and work towards social justice, having them choose to be involved, strengthen their voice and influence other young people, and work with young people holistically . What I take away from this article is as youth worker we have to help our youth be more than book smart. I am not saying our teachers and education is not helping our students out with that, but our job gives us the leeway to explore different options than just papers and numbers. The youth do not have an option than to go to school, but for us we have to try to engage them and get involved and not force them to be there. We have to teach them ways to find their inner voice and to become leaders. Educate them on their welfare and other's welfare. Get them to think deeper about inequality and social justice.

I feel like this article hit the pin point of what a youth worker does. From my experience in the field, working with middle school students after school at Central Falls middle school; we wanted to be their friends, so they can be comfortable around us, but most importantly we were their mentors first. We came up with games and activities every week for everybody to be involved. Had the students and mentor think and reflect on the activities. None of the students were pressure to be there, and surprisingly every week majority of the students showed up. The most important goal for our college class was to work with these youth and try to get them to become better leaders.