As I was working through those slides I did realise theres considerable potential to fail, mostly because for open source to work it needs a strong community, and really the youth work online community is still pretty weak and also somewhat guarded I think. Still, everything has to start somewhere so hopefully we can build on the few people who’ve already shown interest and in time we may get to the point where theres a strong enough online community to use the open source approach seriously in developing future programmes & projects with young people.

I’m not sure that I actually did explain the concept that well so if you’re still confused please say so!

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A couple of days ago, Ben (my 5 year old son) asked me “whats the credit crunch?”. “Its where greedy Banks give lots of money away to greedy people who aren’t able to pay it back, then the Banks ask for it back but can’t get it, so they take all the rest of the money for themselves and then there’s no money for anybody else” - he took that response quite well!

Then today I heard on the radio that Landsbanki - a bank based in Iceland was in trouble. Until 3 weeks ago all of our savings were with Landsbanki - an irony is that being skint I transferred most of our savings back into a current account - otherwise today I wouldn’t be able to access them. We still have some money with them and theres a notice on their website saying our money is safe but as yet we still can’t access it.

So now that ‘credit crunch’ has really hit home I started thinking more about Bens question, and then on the radio was an interview with some Government bod (don’t know who) trying to explain the Governments bail out plan today for banks. The interviewer pressed the Govt bod to answer where the Government was getting the money from to do this - higher taxes? Well Govt bod managed to avoid doing that - instead waffling on about how it wasn’t the same as other Government investments because this involved obtaining assets and so on.

Now the impression I got from that interview was that actually they’re talking crap - they’re not talking about ‘real’ money - they’re just talking about cycles of credit that will hopefully give an impression that everyone can keep on borrowing more “money”.

Heres an idea of what I mean….

Now heres some questions - if money isn’t real do we need it? How could a future society look without money? (or financial credit), and how do we educate young people to manage their finances now - save and spend or learn to manage credit?

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No doubt some of you who’ve been around a bit longer have seen much more change - how do you think values will change in the next 10 years though?……..

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With that in mind I said that I would start getting some ideas up for planning a ‘digital youth work strategy’. I’ve already thought about how to approach this and wanted to get early thoughts up, so here goes……

The ’strategy’ itself is going to involve developing an online programme using a ‘positive development’ approach. Once I’ve laid out my own ideas I’m going to explore methods for inviting people to contribute and collaborate into the programme along the idea of creating an ‘open source digital youth service‘.
So here’s the early thinking for the strategy:

• Develop a rationale for the programme
• Develop the practical programme
• Identify relevant online tools & resources
• Develop delivery methods including consideration for supporting practitioners to use the tools
• Invite collaboration to refine the programme
• Consider evaluation methods & methods for user involvement
• Promote and publicise the programme
• Ongoing evaluation and refinement

Now some things to keep in mind:

1. The programme itself will be based on my own previous work, so I’m going to skip a few things that would normally be involved in a strategy such as consultation. Partly because this has already been done in the context of the basic need for such a programme (however it hasn’t been done in terms of providing the programme online but its just a demo, I’m not being funded for it!)
2. You may not wish to use this particular programme - but the real point is to demonstrate a strategic approach to developing a digital youth programme
3. The development itself is likely to be messy - things won’t necessarily be done in the correct order and won’t be all nicely packaged up, because I’m developing it openly. Normally I’d be locking myself away for a few weeks, making a right mess of my office, before getting towards the end when I delete probably a third of ideas, reword everything, reorder everything and then tart it up to be presentable and to fit whatever funding guidelines are required. In this case no fundings involved so I don’t have to worry about that, although sometimes though guidelines actually help!
4. I’m not giving any particular consideration to involving young people in the development of the programme. Its being done openly so of course there’s an equal opportunity for anyone to involve themselves and it would be nice to get some good input, but I’m not going to get hung up on it. Normally of course I would on the basis that it does usually take extra effort and consideration to get young people involved - so in terms of a real strategy it should be a high priority - but this is just a demo.
5. I’m not looking for funding - however I would always argue that developing a programme in order to get funding is the wrong approach anyway. Much better to develop a programme based on something you’re passionate about or that has been identified as a need and then look for appropriate funders. Now some of you are already thinking “how naive!”, and you’re right (for the current climate) - but I stand by this as a principle, and who knows? if the programme ends up as being any good maybe some kind funder will get in touch to support real development and I’ll be proved right
6. So point number 5 isn’t very likely - but if you’re an organisation that wants to develop an online programme along these lines - take it! You can keep me happy by crediting me as the source and make me really happy by sending over a donation towards childrens school fees in Malawi - but that’s up to you, if you don’t care for my happiness just take it anyway!

OK - so on to the rationale!

The programme will consist of 7 ‘modules’:

• Creativity & Expression
• Appreciating the Environment
• Leadership & Teamwork
• Culture & Diversity
• Decision Making & Communication
• Organisational Skills
• Collaboration

Some people may find those modules familiar! They’re taken from the original Young Movers programme on which our current work is based. The brief history of these is that when I started developing Young Movers I took inspiration from some research and programmes in the US. Unfortunately I’ve long lost the details of these but the basic principle was that there are a series of ‘competencies’ that young people should be supported to achieve if they’re to make the successful transition from adolescence to adulthood.

I adapted these and over time refined them further based on courses we ran. The 7th module is a new addition and at this stage I’m really thinking of a module aimed at practitioners/programme leaders to support them to effectively deliver the online programme, so it may well change from ‘collaboration’ to something else.

I was going to go into the rationale for each of the modules but this is already lengthy so I’ll cover that in the next post! In the meantime if you have your own thoughts please do share them - having people to bounce ideas off always helps.

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I added a bit in to this to ask the simple point - “why bother?”. We facilitated this by inviting people to jot their reasons & motivations for using the web in youth work on sticky notes. Then others ‘endorsed’ the reasons they felt had the most value.

It wasn’t a very scientific approach and it was the final session of the day so possibly a few couldn’t be bothered inputting too much into the actual chart but it did achieve the main objective which was to provoke some thought about the benefits of using the web. Unfortunately lack of time prevented us from taking this further and building an argument for how to use web tools effectively but that would be a nice thing to build on in the future.

I’ve attached a summary of the responses and you can see them displayed in a chart format in the image. The main motivations were communication - either directly communicating with young people or broadcasting a message to them or about them.

There was some discussion about the value of being able to keep records and share memories - I interpreted this personally as encouraging creativity but actually that’s not what was within the debate (ie. I’d view encouraging use of social media as fostering creativity but I think most people regarded photo & film hosting as convenient methods for storing photos & films).

The benefits of the web being a low cost medium was a small consideration/benefit, though there was an alert that this isn’t always the case either financially or in time.

I added the use of the web as a means of providing additional support to young people based on how we’ve previously used online messengers, email and forums to support volunteers, but actually this wasn’t on many peoples radar either.

That the web is regarded as primarily a communication tool isn’t surprising - that’s what the web was created to be, however I am surprised that more thought isn’t given to the potential for using the web for personal development and support. Possibly some reason for this is that the current debate about the web in youth work is very much biased towards the use of social networks and that was reflected at yesterdays event, and consequently people aren’t especially looking to use wider web technologies just yet. Another possible reason is that many people are still getting to grips with using the web themselves and so aren’t yet skilled or confident enough to begin regarding the web as a ‘tool’ that they can adapt towards personal development and support (much as they may use arts/sports etc.)

In the next few weeks I’ll start to get some thoughts up about practical ways that different web tools can be used in youth work and how they can be linked together towards forming a ‘digital youth work strategy’. In the meantime if you have your own thoughts about reasons & motivations for using the web in youth work please do add them in the comments.

Download a summary of the responses here

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One of the things that stood out for me during the day was how little consideration is given by practitioners to how they can use web technologies to be more productive/effective/efficient. Instead it feels slightly as though many people are so concerned with young peoples use of social networks and social media, that they end up only focussing on those things - there’s a sense of “we need to get on board or catch up with the kids”, but I wonder whether this means people end up taking their eye off the ball and are actually missing out on the most effective way to get to grips with the technology - using it for yourself!

Midway through the day Dave Briggs organised the ‘Social Media Game‘. I joined the group challenged with considering ‘Youth Workers Collaborating’, because I’ve written about this recently. The things that came out of the subsequent discussions for me were:

• People need to meet in real life to want to collaborate
• The approach and attitudes of youth workers needs to change for them to want to collaborate

For point one, of course they don’t really - the web is full of collaborators who have never met in real life. But in youth work at the moment I think that maybe this just seems a bit weird - why would you want to ‘collaborate’ with someone you’ve never even met? (or why would they want to with you?) Well today went some way towards getting this in motion and it will be interesting to see if the discussions over on the UkYouthOnline site pick up, and also whether we see any new blogs in the near future.

For the second point I can never decide between whether many Youth Workers are oppressed and don’t feel they can share ideas openly, or whether they’re too protective and competitive (possibly due to the competitive funding culture we operate in).  No doubt some will point to ‘partnership working’ & so on, but this isn’t the same as ‘open collaboration’. Open collaboration means really putting your ideas out into the open and inviting others to take them, use them and improve them.

I had a couple of conversations during the day that  led to me talking about the idea of ‘Open Source Youth Work’ - a concept of openly creating the ‘ideal’ youth service by putting ideas online and then allowing anyone (young people included) to input into shaping and developing that service. It would be fascinating to compare this ‘bottom up’  creation to the existing youth service. Unfortunately I don’t think we’re yet at the stage where there would be enough youth work input to make the idea feasible.

Still I think Tims got the ball rolling a little quicker today by organising the event, and kudos too to DIUS (Department Innovation, Universities & Skills) for kindly hosting the event.

Note:

There’s already some stuff up online from todays event….

Jon’s thoughts on the day

Dave Briggs Flickr pics

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Apparently they’ve now decided that young people don’t think volunteering so instead they’re going to call it ‘doing favours’!

um does that sound anything like Millennium Volunteers?

“right volunteering is not cool - so lets say that cool things are volunteering”

“er but some of that stuff isn’t actually volunteering - I mean they’re just playing football or baby sitting their little brother”

“no, no, those things do benefit other people so really we can count it as volunteering can’t we?!”,

“er I suppose so but doesn’t that mean we haven’t really increased volunteering we’re just calling stuff they’re already doing something different?”

“well yes but at least we can write some impressive reports and keep the funding coming in….”

OK I’m maybe being over cynical - but it hard not to over such ridiculous wastes of funding. They may be right that ‘volunteering’ isn’t cool - but rebranding, giving it a new name still isn’t going to suddenly result in surges of young people running out to volunteer. Maybe if more effort had been given to developing more rounded programmes, that funding could have helped support young people to become genuinely more community minded. But instead this simple “get them volunteering and they’ll be good citizens” won’t work - it needs a cultural shift, not fancy films and marketing.

For all the money that has been spent they might have been better just giving every young person in England a holiday job - “here you go I’ll pay you £50 for doing something nice for somebody else each Sunday this month!” At least then young people would have benefited more than all those involved with putting these campaigns together.

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I do think online technology could be a brilliant tool for ’solving’ this problem - but it needs a bit more thought than just banging out a site. So I’ve gone right back to the start to have a think about what that problem actually is.

I first became aware that there was a ‘problem’ quite early on in the development of the Young Movers programme. Young Movers was initially based on a loose remit of creating a programme for young people in citizenship. My take on this was to try and develop a programme that would help young people to become ‘good citizens’ - this meaning they would be the sort of people any community would be proud of and who would have the skills to make positive contributions to those communities. Hence my first interest in the ‘wooly world’ of ’soft skills’!

In the early courses we ran we used various outdoor (adventurous) activities. Afterall everyone knows outdoor activities are the best way to develop confidence, leadership etc. Now I love abseiling - early in my working life I spent a couple of summers happily throwing all sorts of people down ropes, and it was very satisfying, reassuring people who were very scared, to actually get to the bottom. In those early Young Movers courses though I felt differently - I really struggled with how young people would actually be able to transfer what they got from the experience of completing an abseil, into the confidence they would need in real life situations back home. They undeniably got a high from completing an abseil, but I just couldn’t make the link between them doing that, to being able to ‘bottle up’ what they got from it and making it into a genuinely useful experience.

My solution at the time was to stop using these activities and instead to develop alternative activities that were still challenging and enjoyable, but that had more direct relevance to being able to organise projects/activities.

The problem came again though years later. This time it was from my first hand observations of being able to see young people develop in all sorts of ways, and from all sorts of testaments from young people themselves and those working with them somehow attributing their personal successes back to their experiences with us. All very nice to hear - but how do you prove what those benefits actually were?

My experience at Social Innovation Camp was fascinating, largely because probably above any other project my idea was the “what the f**k is that about?!” project. Basically people who work in informal education would see this as a familiar problem (and frustration), but to anyone else they just didn’t get it until having had a very lengthy explanation (much like this post is becoming!).

Anyway to help package my thoughts I’ve created a slideshow. I have started to have some good thoughts about how to approach this now (but more on that in the future!), but maybe you have ideas too - if so please do share them.

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The new YoMo site is almost complete and includes a simpler downloads section for information sheets and leaflets etc. I’ve also been doing some much needed updating of just about all of our Information Sheets. If you want to be notified as soon as the new site goes live sign up to the YoMo Mailing List

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As I got close one of the young people dashed inside the shop and when I entered was running around it. As he passed me by he said “don’t worry he’ll be here in a  minute”, shortly after the shop assistant appeared and apologised because he’d been out the back clearing boxes. As I left the shop the lad that had gone in to find the assistant held the door open for me - I thanked him and left.

It made me smile because like most people on getting to the shop I wondered what they were all up to - of course most probably nothing at all - just hanging around where theres some light while a couple tinkered with the motorbike, and as it seemed looking out for the shop too.

It reminded me of the Buzz Off campaign against mosquito devices and the Downing Steet E-Petition which only got a pretty rubbish 149 supporters. Presumably the local shop here won’t be installing any anyway!

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