Policy Development from the Youth Work Perspective
Between the 15th and the 19th September, the European Youth Forum organised a training on the topic of policy development entitled “How to Develop Policies from the Youth Work Perspective”. Held in Vienna, Austria, the training brought together a selection of the Youth Forum’s members from both International Non-Governmental Youth Organisations (INGYOs) and National Youth Councils (NYCs). It tackled the conception, consultation, drafting, adoption, implementation and evaluation of youth policy.
The organisations present – both National Youth Councils and International Non -governmental Youth Organisations- brought a diversity of experience and practice, which contributed to wide-ranging discussions.
With the aim of helping participants consider how to strengthen the policy development processes in their organisations, the introductory conversations concerned how, what, when and why policy development is done. Each organisation then presented and discussed how it does policy development, for the rest of the participants to consider the strengths and weaknesses of each system.
When the ideal process of creating policies was discussed, we agreed that the process should be democratic, participatory, effective, necessary, and applicable, and have regard to the organisational working culture. Regulations should be put in place making sure that everyone knows how the process is happening, what the timeframe is and who can take part in the different phases of the process.
Later in the training participants were invited to propose topics for discussions in an open space. Everyone could choose one of three topics in each three rounds of discussions. The discussions included: cross pillar cooperation in the Youth Forum: cooperation between the two types of organisations in the Forum: INGYO’s and NYC’s; funding of the youth work, structured dialogue, health, domestic violence and many more.
After the conclusion of the training, the most relevant consideration for OBESSU was how to best strengthen and systemise the policy evaluation process once policy has been adopted and implemented.
Written by Dasa & Luke, OBESSU Board Members
