Practical Participation

[Summary: Two day course, and six-month action learning set on social media in youth work and youth participation] (Reposted from Tim’s Blog)

Getting started with digital youth work, or with using digital tools in youth participation, can seem daunting to many. It’s not enough to just talk about how digital skills are essential assets needed in the youth-serving workforce, or to point to tools and approaches that professionals should be using. Training opportunities, capacity building, and ongoing action learning to inform that training are all needed. Which is why I’m really pleased that 2010 will see the return of two key opportunities.

1) Social Media and Youth Participation Action Learning Set

Building on the Action Learning Set I co-facilitated last year, this six-month (one meeting a month) action learning supports participants who are working to increase their own organizations engagement with social media. Through expert inputs, workshops and shared action learning projects with peers – the action learning set aims to develop the skills of individuals, and the capacity of organizations, to engage with social media in youth participation.

Last year’s set resulted in a printed and online guide; and supported a wide range of local projects – ranging from those focussing on social media and youth engagement around commissioning, to projects supporting the use of social networks to engage young people in care in decision making.

You can find out more about this year’s action learning set (first session taking place at the end of January) and details of how to book in this flyer: Social Media and Youth Participation Action Learning Set

2) Two-day training for Youth Work Professionals

After a successful pilot, Katie Bacon will be leading a number of two-day trainings in 2010, on ‘Social Media for Youth Work Professionals’. Katie & I have developed the course together, and initially we’ll be running a number of sessions in partnership with LECP Training.

This two-day training is designed to support youth professionals from a wide range of backgrounds to develop their understanding of social media and how to use it as a tool in their work. Including hands-on activities to learn to use different social media tools – it’s a practical training that grounds the use of social media tools in professional values and practices.

You can read about the pilot training day in this reflective blog post from trainer Katie Bacon, and keep an eye on the LECP Training network for details of when the public course dates are announced (join the network to get training alerts).

We’re also exploring how this training might be offered as in-service training in individual local authorities, or offered on a regional basis – so if you might be interested in having Katie and/or I come to train with your service/region, then do get in touch.

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I’m also hopeful that 2010 will bring the completion of a couple more digital youth work resources I’ve been working on. More on that some other time…

Reposted from Tim’s Blog

One of the curious things I’ve discovered in seeking to equip practitioners to engage with social technology is that, the more I explore about digital media, the more I end up creating printed resources, or at least, resources based on a book/handbook structure.

That’s the case with a new resource that was published today by the Local Government Information Unit (LGIU) that is the product of learning from the Network Participation action learning set I co-facilitated earlier this year.

Drawing on theory and case studies explored during that action learning set, ‘Social Media – Youth Participation in Local Democracy‘ is designed to step through some of the issues that practitioners need to consider in exploring the use of social networks and social media in youth participation.

It’s available to order from the LGIU Website, and for online purchase via Central Books.

(P.S. If you’re interested in more practical resources to support youth engagement and youth work uses of digital technology – keep your eyes open, as I’m in the midst of working on a new toolkit hopefully ready early in the New Year…)

The Commonwealth Youth Exchange Council (CYEC) supports youth-led reciprocal exchanges between the UK and Commonwealth Countries – as well as co-organising a wide range of global youth work and Commonwealth youth projects. We recently developed a Drupal based website for CYEC, and will be creating a resource pack to support exchange groups and CYEC projects to promote their own work online using free and low cost social media tools.

Youth-led design process
CYEC are committed to youth-led ways of working – so it was only natural that our development of the CYEC website should take place in partnership with CYEC’s Youth Action Group – young people and young-adults who are getting involved in the governance of the organisation. We ran a series of 1/2 day design sessions with the Youth Action Group to identify the right structure and content for the site – and used a content-jam approach to rapidly and collaboratively write most of the copy for the site.

For the visual design of the site we turned to Joff Williams of Think Pigment – providing a spec based upon the ideas of the Youth Action Group, and consulting with the Youth Action Group on the draft design as it developed.

Flexible project spaces
Over 30 CYEC exchanges take place each year – and CYEC wanted to be able to provide each exchange with space on their website. However, we recognised that not every exchange would want to add content directly to the CYEC site, so developed flexible project spaces for the site which can either be added to directly, or which can pull in content automatically from an exchange group’s own Blog or online photo gallery.

Not only does bringing together information on exchanges on the CYEC site help showcase the projects that CYEC supports, but it also creates a library of information linked to exchange themes and countries, which future exchange groups can look over when planning their exchanges.

The project spaces on the CYEC site can also be used to provide information and interactive features around the global youth work projects, and Commonwealth Youth Fora which CYEC supports.

A social media youth exchange toolkit
The next phase of getting CYEC online involves creating a social media toolkit to be given to each exchange group funded by CYEC. The toolkit will include details of how exchange groups can use social media tools to raise awareness of their exchanges and the issues that they explore.

Visit the CYEC Website