ICY Board meeting 23-24 February 2015
Board members present: Jonas Agdur (SWE, chair), Lasse Siurala (FIN, secretary to the meeting), Torsten
Rutinowski (GER), Stefan Fischer (GER), Lilia Benhadji (FRA), Nazi Berdzenishvili (GEO), Henny Wibbelink
(NL), Hans Migchielsen (NL, vice-chair), Babis Papaioannou (GRE), Maria Paschallidou (GRE), Tania Stamouli
(GRE), Dimitris Georgiadis (GRE), Claudius Siebel (GER), Georgi Simeonov (BUL) and Van Nieuwenhove Kaï
(BEL).
1. Opening the meeting. Jonas Agdur, the Chair of ICY, opened the meeting and welcomed the Board
members to Gothenburg and the first Board meeting of the ICY.
2. Evaluation of the 3rd Intercity Conference in Den Bosch. The Den Bosch Conference in the
Netherland 8-10 November 2014 was evaluated as a great success. In addition to rich contributions
of speakers, intense group work and inspiring field visits, an important result was the signing of the
founding document of the ICY and the adoption of the “Common Grounds” with its guidelines to get
the European Network started. The Board members appreciated the series of conferences from the
first on in Leipzig (October 2012), through the second in Helsinki (November 2013) to the third in s’Hertogenbosch (November 2014) which all contributed to the final establishment of the Network.
3. Expectations for the ICY. ‘Tour de table’ brought a diversity of issues which could be addressed by
the Network:
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At the heart there should be the expectations and concerns of youth in Europe. The
Network needs to constantly reflect studies, reports and statistics on youth, as well as
gather the experience of youth work across Europe. Peer learning should be at the core of
this process of building knowledge and competence. For example, it was proposed that the
next EU Youth Report should be reflected in the next conference.
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It is important to deal with the ‘identity crises’ of youth work and to answer the questions:
What is youth work? What is its vision? What is its value? What can youth work deliver? Is
youth work able to address current political youth issues or is it too much engaged in ‘pure
youth work’? A European Network of local government youth work has the competence to
contribute to these questions.
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A challenge for the Network is to link European youth policy strategies and projects to the
local level. This means at least two types of advocacy. First, showing how youth work can
effectively address European youth policy issues like youth unemployment, integration of
young people with fewer opportunities, the ‘democracy deficit’, intolerance and fulfill
some of the expectations and dreams of young people. Two, the Network should also bring
the voice of local youth work in the design of the next European youth policy program.
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Another challenge of policy links is that between the national and local youth policies. How
to successfully deal with the sometimes missing bottom–up and top-down dialogue
between the government youth policy programs and the municipal youth policies? National
youth policy strategies do not necessarily cascade down to the local level and the
government policy makers often lack knowledge about local youth work or youth policy.
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How to make transparent the results of youth work and the competencies that youth
develop through youth work? Through better visibility of youth work we can also react to
decreasing youth work budgets.
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The Network should provide its members means for peer learning, running quality youth
work and for making youth work transparent: Sharing experiences with colleagues,
providing opportunities for ’mutual stealing’ and ’mutual help’, carrying out projects
together, job-shadowing, measuring youth work, assessing its quality and being able to
work with urgent issues and ‘hot topics’ (like integrating refugees in big cities, Youth
Guarantee and youth unemployment, radicalization and intolerance etc).
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International level peer learning is relevant for the development of youth work. As an
example, the discussions and conclusions of the Council of Europe National Youth Policy
(peer) Review on Greece (in 2015) will be crucial for the development of the country’s
youth policy and youth work.
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Board members mentioned many examples of potential subjects and projects for peer
learning. One of them was the way Thessaloniki, European Youth City in 2014, has been
able to use the nomination in also bringing continuity beyond 2014.
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Non-formal learning is the specificity of youth work and should be better recognized as a
serious learning approach. The recent EU Committee on Quality in Youth Work (chaired by
Jonas) provides an excellent starting point for making non-formal learning recognized and
the ICY should continue the work of the Committee.
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The network should also be active in recruiting new members and attracting new partners.
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The Network should promote the use of European instruments and funds for youth work. It
was, however, noted that the Network should not take on tasks carried out already by the
National Agencies and other similar services.
The discussion was concluded as follows:
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In response to the challenges above we need to tackle a diversity of themes and utilize a
variety of methods.
As most of the themes that could be subject to peer learning were still broad and abstract
ideas, it could be useful for the ICY to ‘pre-conceptualise’ the topics; to concretize them
into themes that the local government people would find useful to develop through a peer
learning process, becoming motivated to share their own experiences and learn from those
of the others – a task for the Board and the secretariat.
We need to invest in information sharing (through the website) making publicity on
results/achievements of the network, establishing a ‘bulletin board of interests’,
opportunities for job shadowing, etc. Also the Conferences and ad hoc Thematic Working
Groups need to become part of the overall peer learning curriculum of the Network
4. Preparation of the next ICY Conference. The working title of the next ICY conference is ”Youth
work in Europe” and it will be held in Gothenburg 2-4 November 2015. It is foreseen to gather 300450 participants. The program will consist of presentations, exchange of ideas in smaller groups and
study visits. As ICY is a network of those responsible for local government youth work, the
invitations will be sent to the directors of youth. It was assumed that many (most?) of them will not
come to Gothenburg, but it is up to them to send to the Conference the relevant people (the
‘number twos’, middle managers, perhaps politicians). As a longer term strategy it was emphasized
that the Network and the Conferences must be developed in a way to later motivate the directors
themselves to participate. The program profile should be adapted to the interests of the directors,
the activity not to become a convention of youth workers. The Conference is scheduled a two
working-day meeting (lunch-to-lunch with two overnights). It was decided that the Conference fee is
100 euros (to keep the participation threshold as low as possible) if paid before 15th June and 150
euros after that.
As to the themes of the Conference, it was, as a starting point, mentioned that the meeting must
make it clear to all participants what ICY is and what it can actually do. A number of themes were
discussed, including the following:
- Quality youth work: quality assessment, Indicators and the effectiveness/outcomes of youth
work.
- International youth work: Municipality goes international - what does it mean to integrate the
international dimension in youth work, opportunities offered by Erasmus, peer learning in
international youth work, etc
- Addressing topical youth issues: Refugees in big cities, integration to education and the labour
markets, intolerance and radicalization…
- Reflecting the 2015 Youth Work Convention
- Explaining the essence and potentiality of the ICY
- Study visits
Tentative ideas as the title: ”Developing youth work in Europe”, ”Innovative approach to youth in
local level”. These need to be developed more punchy, short and including the local element.
5. Organizing and funding the Board. The meeting discussed the funding opportunities. It was decided
to apply for strategic partnerships (EU/Erasmus+/Youth). Gothenburg prepares a draft bid. Before
the next Board meeting it will be studied which country could be the lead partner. The HQ will start
sending out bills for the 500 euro membership fee. Nazi Berdzenishvili from Georgia agreed to act as
the Treasurer of the ICY.
It was pointed out that, for the credibility of a sustainable future of the Network, it is important to
find the funds as soon as possible.
6. Next meetings of the Board. The 8-9, June in Thessaloniki and the 14-15, September in Tbilisi.