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... It is well established in the research literature that parents, schools, youth organizations, politicians and policymakers all have a significant role to play in promoting youth civic and political engagement (Barrett & Pachi, 2019;Flanagan, 2013;Silke, Brady, Boylan, & Dolan, 2018). Youth organizations provide young people with opportunities to acquire relevant and meaningful experiences of participation and to build their civic skills, and involving young people in activities such as youth clubs, school councils and youth parliaments has been found to increase social capital and political literacy (Brady, Conway, Canavan, & Koviac, 2012;Sloam, 2007). Young people are more likely to become civically engaged when they are in settings such as schools, workplaces, and community organizations where they are asked to meaningfully participate, because their friends are participating, or because they learn about issues that concern them (Flanagan, 2013;Flanagan & Levine, 2010). ...
Over the past decade and more, there has been a significant emphasis in western societies on policy processes to engage youth in civic and political life. Concerns about the extent to which marginalized urban young people in particular have become disengaged from civic and political life has been a common, and contested, theme in youth policy. Currently, there is a dearth of literature exploring how policy provisions have been translated into practice on the ground. In this paper, we draw on semi-structured interviews with 66 policymakers, public officials, and youth work practitioners in London, Belfast, and Dublin to explore the strategies used to engage urban youth and to identify the key challenges associated with these efforts. The strategies used in youth engagement efforts include youth work, deliberative forums, volunteerism, arts, sports and media, non-formal education and technology and social media. Challenges associated with youth civic and political engagement include youth alienation from their communities and institutions, capacity and resource limitations, ritual rather than real engagement and challenges of inclusion.
... Over the past few years, a team of ForóigeFor´Foróige research and development staff has designed, tested and implemented a range of manualised programs covering areas such as leadership for life, community action, health and wellbeing, youth entrepreneurship, and relationships and sexuality. Some of these have also been evaluated by external professionals, overseen by university academics ( Brady et al. 2012;McGrath 2012). We provide training to volunteers in how to facilitate these programs and supply all the necessary materials. ...
... Our volunteers, drawn from the local community, lead the young people in the ForóigeFor´Foróige Citizenship Cycle. The cycle involves studying the community to become aware of its needs, taking action to meet one of those needs, then evaluating to see how the community has benefited and what the young people have learned; often leading to identifying more needs and so into another cycle ( Brady et al. 2012). We have an annual Youth Citizenship Award for groups and individuals, currently sponsored by the Aldi retail chain, which acts as both an incentive to get involved and as recognition for achievement. ...
This article reflects on the importance of adult volunteers in Foróige, a leading Irish youth development organisation. Volunteers make up some 97 per cent of all youth workers in Ireland. Outcomes for huge numbers of young people are mediated through and depend upon volunteers’ suitability, availability, knowledge and skills. The article takes as its starting point three pieces of research in Foróige. Using this evidence, I describe what appear to be the key strengths of the cohorts of volunteers we studied and how Foróige builds on these to reach positive youth development outcomes similar to those sought by the Queensland framework. To support this, Foróige has invested heavily on volunteer development to increase volunteer engagement and provide more roles in which volunteers can participate in achieving youth development outcomes. I explore the value of the positive interactions between volunteers and young people, the role of volunteers in increasing young people's connectedness to community, and the impact on volunteers of other life issues that compete for their time. I outline how the outputs and outcomes of youth work in Foróige would be hugely diminished without adult volunteers.
While there is a strong movement in favour of the use of manual based programmes in the arena of social care, there is a view that such programmes are not applicable in the more fluid setting of youth work, which operates informally, using dynamic and organic methods. For example, Coburn (2011) argues that a critical pedagogical approach to youth work engages young people by encouraging them to become inquisitive, to question why things are the way they are and to pose problems through which they can learn. For some, manualised or evidence based programmes are not seen as having a role in such contexts. However, to date, the international debate in relation to this issue has been limited by an absence of published studies focusing specifically on strategies to implement evidence informed practice in youth work contexts. This paper aims to address this gap in the literature. The Irish national youth organisation Foróige, which works with over 56,000 young people in Ireland on an annual basis, has developed a range of manualised evidence informed resources to support its youth work over recent years. Drawing on research findings from a range of studies conducted with youth workers focusing on implementation of these resources, the paper explores the benefits and tensions associated with the use of programme manuals in a youth work context. The findings suggest that such resources have a valuable role to play in youth work if designed in collaboration with youth workers, showing respect for core youth work values and allowing for flexibility and adaptability in implementation.
