Youth Work 2.0 - how to do it?…..

June 11th, 2008 by mas | Filed under Innovation & Technology.

Tims stuck a few thoughts down over on the NYA blogs about ‘Youth Work 2.0‘ and Hilary mentions in her blog that they are looking into ideas for a ‘Virtual Connexions Centre‘

I’ve been thinking about the concept too but haven’t yet come up with any ideas as to how an online youth service might actually look. Its easy to see how lots of information can be stuck online and lots of ways to support young people to access that information - whats not so easy though is to think of how a ‘virtual service’ could support young peoples development through their actions ie. not just digesting information but actually motivating and supporting them to do things that are self developmental, and of course being able to record those experiences and developments and attribute them to the online service.

The challenge that really interests me is in the use of the web as a ‘positive/purposeful activity’. Years ago when I started designing training courses for young people it was a challenge to convince people about the use of leisure/recreational activities within training courses and how these could be the most effective medium for getting young people involved in community activities. Looking back now it seems relatively simple but I was thinking about how I’d approached that as a challenge and whether a similar approach could be used here.

So very quickly I drew up some challenges that an online youth service could set out to achieve:

  • Identifying the potential for transferable skills
  • Providing opportunities for relationship building
  • Potential for development & progressive pathways
  • Peer support & mentoring

…and keeping in mind the idea is to have all of this done online - so its not about having some sort of advisory committee set up that meets a couple of times a year and uses the web to keep in touch - its about being able to provide developmental opportunities online comparable to those in the real world.

Identifying the potential for transferable skills

This isn’t too hard - some of them are very obvious (computer & media skills etc.), some less so but I shouldn’t think this is much of a challenge.

Providing opportunities for relationship building

Probably the part that would take most consideration initially, particularly regarding safety measures - allowing opportunities for people that have never met to develop effective relationships but in an environment that is safe and not open to abuse. The effective relationship bit maybe actually isn’t that hard there are lots of online communities made up of people that work together on projects but never meet in real life.

Potential for development & progressive pathways

This is the ‘participation’ bit - providing pathways for young people to be able to develop their involvement & responsibility and also to be able to contribute to the development of the service itself. The challenge here is in providing enough opportunities for young people to be able (and willing) to demonstrate their interests/challenges etc. and ways for these to shape the service itself.

Peer support & mentoring

Online forums where people get advice form peers rather than just professionals have been around for a long time. I don’t think its so much this kind of support thats the challenge (although still useful), but more creating mechanisms for young people that have become progressively involved to support and mentor other young people to follow their example, learn from their skills & experiences etc.

There are further challenges of course in relation to finding people with the necessary skillsets to be able to act as ‘Digital Youth Workers’ - would they be geeks skilled up to work with young people or youth workers skilled up to use technology, or is it a completely different skill set thats required? I imagine there will also be much debate about the necessary safety measures and good practice these sorts of people would have to work within too. Lots to think about but even though the concept seems extremely remote at the moment it also seems a bit inevitable which perhaps poses a further question as to whether the current youth service will be proactive and actively shaping youth work online or it will it find itself simply trying to keep up with young people (arguably it already is!).

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    the whole discussion about online youth work has thrown up issues i never thought about - young people in the main are not that it literate - there are real access issues for some young people - i am still surprised by the fact that there is a significant minority of young people that do youth act that don't have an email add and another small no that only access the internet at school as they don't have internet access at home...
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    I think theres a bit of a myth that all young people are somehow technical wizz kids and certainly many seem to lack relatively basic skills both in using computers and the web - quite likely hindered by the short sighted approach to computer access in schools and local authorities.

    Having said that I don't think access issues are particularly important in this context if we consider that we're looking forward and it seems to me a reasonable assumption that access will rapidly improve and increase as time goes on - not least through mobile internet on mobile phones.

    For those young people that don't currently have emails I'd double check that - we heard the same from several apprentices when we first started doing most of our stuff online - turned out some of them didn't realise that hotmail is email!?! and all of them had a school email address. Most of them also were very inventive in being able to circumnavigate various restrictions placed on accessing certain sites by their schools.
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    A friend just forwarded me this post. Thought you might like to know that I'm working on a version of just this. Using next generation web technologies, social networks and online social behaviour to enable virtual volunteering; primarily to support the development of inner city youth. More info on my blog at www.urbansurvivalproject.org
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    Hi Rizwan - I had a good look through your blog, looks like you've been giving the idea a lot of consideration.

    I'm interested in the facebook/social network approach and whether its possible to actually get people to take action beyond interacting within that network. People seem happy to sign up to groups, play around with applications and occasionally comment, but will they actually do anything offline? My own experience so far is that facebook can work well for groups that already exist and use it for organising/communicating (like us), or as in the example of Simon Berry http://tinyurl.com/6qxszq it can help demonstrate wide support for an individuals/small groups action or campaign....... but can social networks actually inspire people to take action when previously they wouldn't?

    I'd like to think they can - but its going to take a different approach. Currently its accepted that the vast majority of people who read blogs and forums don't and never will contribute. This isn't the case in real life projects and programmes (not if they work anyway!) - so the challenge I think is to be able to design an online service thats able to inspire action for the majority of users, not an already active minority - or is this too ambitious?
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    Hi Mas. Good points. My thoughts on this are that none of the existing social networks like Facebook or MySpace are designed to inspire action. However they can be used as conduits. In terms of audience, considering that Facebook has just gone over 120 odd million hits a month, and with over 80 million members most of which are in the Gen Y and Gen X demographics, it is a huge active majority that can be mobilised. The challenge is understanding and leveraging their motivations, and making it effortless. I'm reasonably confident around how we can do this by tapping into existing networks but not using their infrastructure or the standard models of interaction like wikis, blogs, comments, etc that most people never contribute to. My feeling is that our first challenge is to remove the real and perceptual barriers to helping others, by developing information, experience sharing and creativity based virtual volunteering that is quick, easy and satisfying. Then once we've built a decent community, slowly begin to leverage it for offline volunteering. But we must come at it from the perspective of the individual volunteer and enabling the value they want out of it, and not the traditional perspective of plugging organisations that need help. Bit difficult to convey the scope of what I'm thinking via these comments. If you'd like to talk it through and share some ideas I'd be happy to meet and discuss. Just drop me an email.
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    Hi Rizwan - I definitely will be in touch in the nearish future. I'm tied up at the mo updating our main site + moving house but I'm hoping from August to be able to dedicate more time to this.
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    Great. Look forward to it. Good luck with the moving etc.

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