Executive Summary: Encouraging UK-German Youth Exchanges
Encouraging UK-German Youth Exchanges
Recommendations
Infrastructure support is required to enable and encourage youth organisations and youth services in both countries to engage in UK-German youth exchanges. Within the youth sector there is a desire to:
Based on the findings of this research, a series of recommendations on actions needed to foster greater UK-German youth exchanges were developed by the project resonance group:
Any new or updated funding, policy actions or initiatives to enable UK-German exchanges should enable the youth sector to:
10. Provide national points of contact in each UK nation which are embedded within the existing youth sector support bodies and provide intensive support and information for UK-German youth exchanges. 11. Enable a central point of contact to better provide information and partner matching for UK-German youth exchanges.
1. Develop youth exchanges which are accessible and affordable to young people.
2. Develop youth exchanges which involve young people from marginalised backgrounds.
3. Develop youth exchanges that are group-based and enable pre-existing groups of young people to actively participate in planning their own exchanges. 4. Utilise a range of different youth exchange formats and topics whilst maintaining a core focus on personal and social development, and intercultural learning.
Such infrastructure may then act to support the youth sector by:
12. Providing a brokering role that helps identify and match potential exchange partners between countries.
5. Ensure youth exchanges are high quality, well planned, and well supported by youth work.
13. Delivering or co-ordinating capacity building activities between the UK and Germany.
It is necessary to increase financial resources available to the youth sector for UK-German youth exchanges and to:
14. Facilitating longer-term partnerships between UK and German youth organisations and services. 15. Raising awareness of funding opportunities for UK-German youth exchanges through information and publicity campaigns.
6. Develop a grant-based funding programme for UK-German youth exchanges which covers the full costs of exchanges to organisations, including staff costs.
16. Within the UK only, provide 1 on 1, mentoring style support for youth organisations.
7. Utilise a flexible funding approach which gives autonomy to applicants.
8. Offer a range of different funding routes to support UK-German exchanges including,
It is also necessary to build competences and confidence of youth workers to run UK-German youth exchanges. To achieve this there is a desire to:
a. An open funding stream, b. A specialised funding stream for youth exchanges with marginalised groups of young people, c. A funding stream for networking, partnership building and youth worker exchanges, d. A small-scale, rapid access ‘kick-off’ fund.
17. Enhance training for the youth sector in both countries on delivery of youth exchanges.
18. Develop a bilateral network of youth workers focused on UK-German youth exchanges.
9. Increase resources available to the youth sector in general.
19.
Develop youth worker exchanges.
20. Develop a suite of best practice resources and practical tools for organising UK-German youth exchanges.
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