Europe still lives one of the biggest crisis in histoy. The COVID 19 crisis is now 1 year old and there is still no end.
At the moment the “3. Wave” is rolling all over Europe and bringing more and more COVID cases in almost every country and the numbers are getting higher again. As the Economy is getting worse in most of the European countries the EUROPEAN UNION decided on bringing more and more money in the system to help the local/small/and big businesses to avoid thousands of insolvencies.
Europe is thinking about its economy and growth but is it also think of its youth?
What will happen with all the young people in the upcoming 2 or 3 years? Young people who could not go to (vocational) schools or Universities for almost over 1 year now? Youngsters who were supposed to graduate from school and start their life? Youngsters who are sitting in front of their TV or Computer and can’t see friends that often as they would like to because of the restrictions in most of the countries.
Will they be more and more completely used to the fact that the TV, the mobile device or the computer is part of their daily live? Will the “Technologies” play a bigger part in their lives, mre then they already do?
Just watching the past 12 months, since March 2020 until now March 2021 we see that this is the direction we are going to. So this is why we think that these young people might need professional help from youth workers, pedagogues, mentors and tutors etc more than ever to continue life outside the “Techs”. During the next years new programs in youth work and international youth exchange have to be implemented by the EUROPEAN UNION or other institutions to catch and reach exactly this youth who was forced to live a life during a long time that they maybe never would have chosen by themselves. There was already a lot of disadvantaged youth in (and outside) Europe and there will probably be more after the CORONA crisis ends. If it really ends….
Luckily we are working in our project Live Learning on strategies and a guideline for youth workers who can benefit of the experiences in international projects from the all the Live Learning partners. Experiences from over 30 years of youth work we gather together.
We will provide a multilingual Website and guideline and also practical examples on youth work so that everybody in the field of youth work can benefit.
In the future we will also try to implement new strategic partnerships and elaborate new programms for (disadvanteged) youth.
