What's In It For Me? Youth Work Incentives

You might be a ‘Youth Worker with benefits’ if you meet the following criteria:

If the first thing your youth ask is “When’s the pizza getting here?”.
If your nickname has anything to do with candy. Or if your primary descriptor when youth tell their friends about you is “He/she always has candy”.
If you’re the one (I’m talking to you, school-based workers) youth come to for lunch vouchers, hall passes or late slips more than once a week.
If your first thought when planning a youth program is “What can I give out so that the youth turn up”.

In my opinion, youth work incentives are a tricky business and their overuse can be a slippery slope. Often, the skills we are teaching our youth need to be incentive enough. The education, time with a mentor, time with their peers and/or time with a guest speaker should be a huge benefit to them, without constantly needing CDs (remember those?!), MP3s, concert tickets, candy, food and other giveaways.

When you constantly provide incentives in youth work programs, the young people begin to develop a sense of entitlement. They begin to feel they deserve these items just for showing up.

What if your funding runs out for incentives? What if one of the parents who always brings goodies and pizza for the youth gets a new job and moves away? Are you then going to use money from your own pocket to buy youth work incentives?

Your answer may be, ‘Yes! Whatever it takes to get youth coming to my awesome programs, because my programs are important and they need the information.’ My answer would be, ‘Have you considered how you’re going to keep providing those youth work incentives when your group grows to 25, 50 or 100 youth?’ Because awesome programs with important information are likely to grow. Especially those that give out incentives at every meeting.

You can grow your youth groups without monetary, edible or gift incentives. Empowering your youth will create ownership, which will in turn create growth. Youth will want to be a part of something they care about and have a say in.

I’m not saying throw out all youth work incentives. I’m just suggesting we use them judiciously. Games that result in a small prize for the winner on occasion are great fun. Pizza (or other food) is completely reasonable if you’re celebrating something or holding an event that’s longer than usual. Maybe food is something that you provide because of the situation affecting your youth – offering healthy meals to disadvantaged youth is a great way to care for them.

Personally, I like to build fun and educational trips into the middle and end of my programs. Attendance on these trips is based on program attendance and participation over several weeks or months. It motivates youth to stick with something and gives them something to look forward to, without the immediate gratification of getting something each session.

Question: Do you provide youth work incentives? If so, what kinds and how often? If you don’t, why not? Let us know in the comments below.

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