7 tips for recruiting Ultimate Youth Workers
Recruiting Ultimate Youth Workers… Recruiting is one of the most important jobs a youth service manager will ever have. Managers are responsible for two major tasks: results and retention. You can never get great results if you have mediocre people and you will never retain people if they don’t believe in what you are doing. […]
National Youth Week 2016
National Youth Week Every year adults around the country set apart a week to celebrate the exciting time of life called youth! The arrogance of adults! That we would think young people deserve a week of focus and then pack it up for another year. That governments would put the measly scraps of funding towards […]
Training: The next evolution in Ultimate Youth Worker
Training for the future Well the world turns and we are still kicking. Funding cuts hurt us as an organisation as you know. We decided that that was not ideal. We rely on fee for service work to keep going. We have most often focused on supervision sessions to meet our funding needs. Occasionally we would […]
Returning to our social justice roots
Returning to our social justice roots is imperative As a young man I attended a youth centre in the suburbs of Melbourne that changed my life. The staff there had a mission to see me become the best I could be. They invested in my life through camps, day trips, courses and counsel. They supported […]
To all the amazing women: Happy International Women’s Day!
Women are amazing! Let me just state that from the beginning. I am in awe of so many women in my life. Women I love, Women I work with, Women I studied with… Women who are changing the world. I have the privilege of working with some of the most amazing and talented women in […]
What do youth workers need to know about sociology?
Sociology for youth workers As youth workers we draw on many different frameworks to help us make sense of the world our young people live in. One of the most used frameworks in our kit bag is sociology. Through the sociological lens we can analyse social phenomena at different levels and from different perspectives. From concrete […]
The sociological imagination and youth work
The sociological imagination As one of the main sociologists in history C. Wright Mills has contributed much to the study of humanity. Perhaps though nothing as important as the ‘sociological imagination’. The ability for people to see an issues from another’s point of view. Literally to imagine yourself in their shoes. The sociological imagination asks […]
future youth sector
Is this the future youth sector? There is a lot of talk in the youth sector which is splitting the camps into those wanting to go back to an age where we were well funded by government and able to do our own thing versus those wanting to collude with government and find a way […]
Take a step on a new journey toward 2020
Journey towards 2020 “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” -Lao Tzu As we journey toward 2020 there has been a lot of discussion about youth work as a dying vocation. Our numbers are dropping, we have less graduates and government funding is being slashed like never before. Lets be honest. […]
The youth work question
What is the youth work question? Over the last decade I have been asked to speak with hundreds of people who want to be youth workers. Sometimes in seminars or training courses, other times I get to do it one on one. The first question I always ask is “Why do you want to be […]