Youth Workin' It

Consultancy and Resources for Youth Workers and Organizations Worldwide

3 Youth Unemployment Solutions (And Why It Matters)

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Youth unemployment solutions
Use these ideas to help your young people get a job

We’re starting a new series on Wednesdays that compiles some of our previous posts. We’ve published hundreds of posts over the last year, so you may have missed some of these (shocking, I know!)

This first compilation covers some youth unemployment solutions by providing tips on how to help young people gain a job:

1. Youth Unemployment – Does It Matter? – This post from the early days of Youth Workin’ It’s blog looks at whether we should be concerned about the youth unemployment rate more than the unemployment rate that encompasses people of all ages (spoiler alert – we should)

2. Job Interview Attire For Youth – Before they go for a job interview, young people need to know what to wear. The first of our youth unemployment solutions has a number of activities to organize to help your youth identify appropriate interview clothing, including how to find cheap job interview attire.

3. How To Conduct A Mock Interview – Now that your young people know what to wear, it’s time to practice their interview skills. This youth work session idea on how to conduct a mock interview has suggestions on how to give your youth this essential practice, along with ideas of who to partner with in order to perform these mock interviews.

Mock interviews can be extremely useful in helping unemployed young people gain the confidence they need, while also providing them with vital feedback on what they need to change to become more employable.

4. The Retweetable Job Interview Resource – After conducting the mock job interviews, your young people may have received feedback that they weren’t concise enough in the interviews. If that’s the case, the third of our solutions for youth unemployment could be just the thing to help them.

The purpose of the Retweetable Job Interview Resource is to help young people practice being concise when being interviewed. This enables them to convey the main points of what they want to say without waffling on, or going off on a tangent and not answering the question they’ve been asked.

Question: What other youth unemployment solutions have you used to help young people get a job? We’d love to hear your ideas in the comments below.

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Write Haikus With Youth – Session Plan Idea

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Write haikus with youthHere’s a slightly more off-the-wall idea for a youth work session – spend some time having your young people write haikus.

What’s a haiku?

A haiku is a short Japanese poem. It has a few things that make it distinctive, but the most commonly recognized features are:

  • The haiku is made up of three lines
  • The first line has 5 syllables, the second line has 7 syllables and the third line has 5 syllables

An example of a haiku could therefore be:

Back To The Future

McFly travels back in time

Then comes back again

(n.b. As the Wikipedia article we’ve linked to explains, a traditional haiku doesn’t have 17 syllables, as in Japanese it’s based on phonetic sounds rather than syllables as such. The aim of this session idea is more to encourage youth creativity and get them to consider issues more deeply, than it is to create authentic haikus.)

Getting your young people to write haikus also helps them work on the skill of being concise (similar to this retweetable job interview resource). With such a limited number of syllables available, they’re forced to communicate what they want to say in just a few words. You could therefore tie in this activity with another session about communication or about the importance of choosing our words carefully.

Subject Of Haiku

Haikus can be written about any and all types of subjects – whatever you’re covering in your youth work program can be explored. Here are 15 suggestions though to get started:

  • Love
  • Anger
  • Friendship
  • Family
  • Forgiveness
  • Poverty
  • Substance abuse
  • Crime
  • Bullying
  • Bible story (if you lead a Christian youth group)
  • Generosity
  • School
  • Health
  • Making choices
  • Hobbies

If you’ve watched a movie as part of a session, you could get your young people to write a haiku summarizing the moral of the story. Alternatively, you could also use haikus as a session evaluation tool.

Tone Of Haiku

You don’t have to make the haikus super-serious. You can have your young people make them funny, abstract, hard-hitting, whimsical, literal – whatever you like. In fact, encouraging them to write multiple haikus with a different tone behind them would be another way for them to work on communication skills.

Question: Have you ever run a haiku youth work session? What tips can you give? Let us know in the comments below.

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The Danger Of Labelling Young People

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Labelling young people
Remove the labels from your young people

So it turns out I’m more judgmental than I realized.

I’d always prided myself on giving people a fair go. (Writing that, I guess I might have a pride issue too!) I didn’t think I came to immediate conclusions about people – that I try to get to know them better before forming an opinion about their character.

I also thought that I didn’t come to conclusions about people based on what other people say about them – that I take the time to get to know them first.

Yeah, apparently that’s not true.

I realized this a couple of days ago while watching the Pando Daily interview below with Mark Pincus. He’s the co-founder and CEO of Zynga – the company that created Farmville, all the other -ville games, Words With Friends, etc.

 

After watching this interview for a little while, I thought to myself, “Ah, he’s not a jerk after all”.

You see, I’d read various articles about him in the past and they were all pretty much negative. The impression I had was that he was going to be brash and not a particularly pleasant person to listen to. Watching the interview though, he came across as intelligent, thoughtful, caring and many other positive character traits.

It was then that I realized that I’d labelled and pre-judged him based on what other people had said. I’d never met him. I’d never spoken to him. I’d never spent time with him. Yet I’d thought he was a jerk.

This was a scary realization. How many other people have I labelled and pre-judged? How many other people do I think are jerks for unfounded reasons? Taking that further, as a youth worker – how many young people have I labelled? How many youth have I pre-judged?

That’s why labelling young people can be so dangerous. Not only can it lead to self-fulfilling prophecy, but it can change how we view them and thereby how we treat them.

It’s not just our own opinions we need to worry about. When labelling youth, we – deliberately or not – will pass these labels on to other people. When a new volunteer has joined your youth group, have you ever warned them about a certain young person?

“Oh, he never listens”

“Be careful of her – she’s a troublemaker”

“Those two are always causing so much drama”

Whether we mean for it to happen or not, this impacts on how other people view the young people and in turn, how they’ll treat them.

I’ve experienced it from the other side too. I’ve been warned about young people before, but sometimes it seems to have simply been personality clashes with the other youth worker – the youth actually end up being different to how they were described.

I’m therefore going to have to make a more conscious effort not to label youth or pre-judge them, as apparently this is something I might be doing without realizing.

And I don’t want to be the jerk.

“If you judge people, you have no time to love them.” Mother Teresa

Question: Have you found yourself labelling young people before? How do you try to prevent yourself from doing this? Let us know in the comments below.

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Family Movie Night And Communication Session

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Being Elmo youth work sessionWe’ve previously talked about how you, as a youth worker, can foster relationship between the youth you work with and their parents.

One way to do this is by holding a family movie night followed by a communication session between parents and their youth. There are many movies that might work depending on what you’re trying to achieve through the session. However, for this post I’m going to recommend you start with ‘Being Elmo: A Puppeteer’s Journey’ which is about Kevin Clash – the voice and puppeteer of Elmo from Seasame Street.

Despite the film being about puppets – and a 3 1/2 year old puppet at that – it’s not a film designed for small children. It’s a documentary about Kevin’s early life and the experiences that led him to be a part of one of the most loved and critically-acclaimed children’s shows of all time.

It shares how Kevin grew up with very supportive parents, along with the dreams he accomplished as a result of those early beginnings. It also shares about the other adults in Kevin’s life who took chances on his dreams and gave him the tools and the connections he needed to achieve his goal of being a Muppeteer on Seasame Street.

Use this movie to foster communication between the youth and their parents about their goals and dreams and how they feel their relationship is developing. It may be challenging for some parents and their children to open up, so make sure you that you’re on hand to help facilitate any quiet parent/youth pairs.

Before The Session

  • Make sure you effectively communicate the details of the event to your parents and youth with enough time for them to participate
  • Check if you need to get a movie license before showing the film or order the Educational DVD which includes an audience license
  • Decide if you want to provide food (including what type) and/or if you’d like to also have this meal be a fundraising opportunity for your youth work program.

At The Session

  • Eat (if applicable)
  • Watch the film
  • Break out into parent and youth pairs for a time of discussion about the film. You may want to provide communication information and activities before starting the session to get everyone more comfortable with the process of communicating, as this may be new for some parents and youth.
  • You and your volunteers should move around the room and help facilitate discussions between parents and youth. Don’t jump in and answer on their behalf, but help ask further questions if a pair is feeling stuck.
  • Encourage both youth and parents to be really honest with themselves and each other about their behavior and their feelings. This will only work if everyone is willing to check their ego at the door to discuss some hard truths about how they behave and interact with each other.

Possible Discussion Questions

(P) Questions to parents posed by you or the youth (Y) Questions to youth posed by you or their parents

  • (P) Kevin cut up his father’s coat for his first puppet. How do you feel you would have responded? (Y) How do you feel your parents would have responded? (Both) If your answer was different from your parent’s/child’s, what examples do you have that back up these feelings?
  • (Y) What is one thing that you feel as passionately about as Kevin did about pupeteering? (P) What is one thing you see that your child has a talent for?
  • (Y) What is one thing you’ve tried to do to make that dream a reality? (P) Kevin’s mom picked up the phone and called Kermitt Love for Kevin. What is one thing you have done or can do to help your child make their dream a reality?
  • (P) Kevin missed out on a lot of his own child’s life while ‘Being Elmo’. Do you feel you are spending enough time with your youth while they are still at home? How would you feel if your child wrote you a letter like Kevin’s did? (Y) If you could write a letter to your parents about how much time they spend with you, what would it say? Do you feel like you get enough time (or got enough when you were younger) with your parent(s)? (Both) If your answer was ‘no’, what is one thing that you can do to spend more time together?
  • (Y) Which adults can you identify as dream squishers and dream enablers in your life? Which of these categories do you think your parent(s) fall into and why? (P) How do you feel about being identified as a dream squisher or enabler? What is one thing you can do to keep improving your enabling or reducing your squishing tendancies?
  • (Both) What is one thing you will remember most about this film and this evening and why?

Question: What do you think of holding parent and youth communication sessions? Have you done it before? Were they successful – why or why not? We’d love to hear about your experiences in the comments below.

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7 Things That Make You A ‘Professional’ Youth Worker

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Professional youth worker
What do you mean I look wired? It’s only my 7th coffee this morning

There’s a stereotype out there of many youth workers.

Many see us as jeans/hoodie-wearing, video game-playing, trip-taking, candy-pushing, Facebook time-wasting, always-on-break, pizza-ravers. And honestly, those are some of the best parts of youth work, there’s no denying it. Some might be considered – or at least consider themselves – professional youth workers despite their frequent-member card for every coffee shop in town.

A professional youth worker is often distinguished through qualifications. Like social workers, teachers, therapists and other professionals, the addition of qualifications makes their work considered ‘professional’ in many settings. This is becoming increasingly true in places like the UK that are now offering professional youth worker training courses (like the amazing one I did at DMU!) and the increased use of the Joint Negotiating Committee’s (JNC) tiered qualifications.

So long as you have the qualifications, you can be considered a ‘professional youth worker’.

However, there is another caricature of a youth worker that’s often very true. We tend to run late, put off administrative tasks, recoil from deadlines, keep our workspace more like a teenager’s bedroom than an office, forget to call people back (or avoid it because it’s an irritating parent or other professional), work unusual hours where it’s hard to track our movements and avoid report writing at all costs.

I don’t care how many letters you have after your name, if your behavior is like this as a youth worker, I would venture to say you’re not really a ‘professional’ anything.

We’re often so caught up in the warm and fuzzy world of relating to youth and worrying about our next youth retreat, we forget that we’re also an important example of how to conduct ourselves as adults.

Here are 7 do’s for being a truly ‘professional’ youth worker, with or without qualifications.

  1. Do call people back. Especially parents. And other professionals. And youth. OK, just call people back full stop
  2. Do show up on time for meetings as the rule rather than the exception
  3. Do come prepared for meetings when you do have to attend them
  4. Do foster good relationships with other youth workers and professionals in your local area and beyond – you never know when you may need them
  5. Do keep your office inviting and comfortable for youth while also creating a postive place for productive administrative work and meetings
  6. Do take the time to plan your work. A 10-minute glance at some notes or a curriculum before the start of a group does not a successful program make
  7. Do keep a variety of koosh balls or candy on your desk.  After all, you are still a youth worker.

Question: What pet peeve do you have about professionalism in youth work? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

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