My best friends think that I am absolutely nuts. How can I work day in and day out with people who almost ritualistically fail in life. People who are such failures in societies eyes that they do not even register as worthwhile. This is how many young people are viewed in society. As failures!
For some reason we see failure as bad in our society. We believe that anyone who fails is useless and that they do not deserve to try again. However as every Ultimate Youth Worker will tell you failures give us a platform from which to work from and they make success taste oh so much sweeter.
Truman Capote said “Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavour”. Many of our young people try, try and try again this in itself is a huge success. When they finally get a win on the board they are ever more excited than before.
Almost every long term youth worker I have spoken to has told me that those mountain top experience are not what keeps them in the field but it does make the failures taste so much better.
Aaron Garth
Aaron Garth is the Executive Director of Ultimate Youth Worker. Aaron has worked as a youth worker in a number of settings including local church, street drug and alcohol outreach, family services, residential care, local government and youth homelessness since 2003. Aaron is a regular speaker at camps, retreats, & youth work training events and is a dedicated to seeing a more professional youth sector in Australia. Aaron is a graduate of RMIT University and an alumnus of their youth work program. He lives in Melbourne with his wife Jennifer & their daughters Hope, Zoe, Esther, Niamh and son Ezra.
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