Executive Summary: Encouraging UK-German Youth Exchanges
Encouraging UK-German Youth Exchanges
Conclusions
Interest and motivation for UK-German youth exchanges In both countries there is sufficient interest from both young people and youth workers in developing UK-German youth exchanges. Lack of interested stakeholders is not likely to be a barrier to any future initiatives.
recognised that effective youth exchanges typically require partners working with similar target groups on both sides. This enables exchanges to bring together young people with common interests, lived experiences, and learning needs in order to increase the potential of the exchange. It will likely be more challenging to find and match potential exchange partners between exchanges working with broader groups of young people. Collaboration around exchanges that include a high level of young people in marginalised situations may be favourable, taking into account the policy and funding landscape on the UK side. A participatory, group work based, reciprocal exchange is understood to be central to a quality youth exchange experience. This was seen to be a crucial part of maximising young people’s learning. Youth workers in the research outlined that a core part of the youth exchange experience is developing and planning exchanges with two groups of young people, one in each country. Through this young people are supported by youth workers to take the lead on designing the exchange trip, working collaboratively with the alternate group to realise a common project. Ideally, this process would then be repeated with the second group undertaking an exchange back to the first group. Follow-on activities from youth exchanges are also important. This can include reflective processes and activities which enable young people to identify how their learning from the exchange might lead them to different attitudes or choices when back at home, including further digitally based activities between participants in both countries. Whilst this approach can be achieved with a variety of formats and groups sizes, it can be understood that working with groups of up to 25 participants or less and stays of up to 14 days is a commonly envisaged model.
The principal attraction for young people is to travel, interact with other cultures and make friends. They are interested in a relatively wide range of project topics, formats, and outcomes. This suggests quite some flexibility in the types of exchanges that could be offered. For both youth workers and young people, there is a strong value placed on personal development through intercultural learning and being within new environments. Experiencing a new environment, learning to interact within it, as well as with local culture, provides a transformative learning opportunity for young people. According to youth workers, the topic or theme of an exchange is best understood as a methodology through which intercultural learning can be delivered. Topics and themes should therefore be led by the specific participants’ interests and determined at project level. Within this context there are still, however, some approaches that are less widely supported: › Digital only formats (e.g., virtual exchanges), though it is accepted amongst both young people and youth workers that digital tools will be used during prepara- tion and follow-on activities. › Individual exchanges. Although these are of interest to young people, especially in Germany, this format is not motivating for the youth sector in either country. There is a preference in the UK youth sector for targeting young people in marginalised circumstances, driven by the policy and funding landscape in the UK. UK youth provision has a significant cohort of young people in these circumstances accessing it. In the German youth sector youth work is open to all with a commitment to inclusion of marginalised groups. There are also German organisations specialising in work with marginalised groups (“Jugendsozialarbeit”), although they are less likely to be actively involved in youth exchanges. It is
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