Questioning Youth Work Practice

What is the purpose of Youth Work? Is it possible to say there is 'A' purpose? How do you define yourself when you use the title of Youth Worker?

I did a search on twitter recently using the #YouthWork and found that most of those tweeting were coming from Youth Ministries, mainly in the UK. We have many of them here in Ireland also but they seem to be quieter in terms of online presence.

Reading through some of the tweets it brought several questions to my mind, her's some of them

Can a #YouthWorker who hasn't dealt with their own inherited prejudice really promote principles of equality & social justice? #YouthWork
— Alan Hayes (@jeditraining) January 27, 2013

If #YouthWork promotes inclusion, diversity,equality,social justice;should a #YouthWorker actively promote or seperate their faith?
— Alan Hayes (@jeditraining) January 27, 2013

The question about prejudice can from the following newspaper clipping I found on FB. I's love to hear your thoughts

What do you think? Do young people owe the world something? Does it owe them? Whats the role of #youthwork ? twitter.com/jeditraining/s…
— Alan Hayes (@jeditraining) January 27, 2013

New Start

Two life changing events within 2 weeks & both in the one year.

My daughter Ruby Mae was born and I was made redundant from my full-time job at the National Youth Council of Ireland. Nothing personal, just a sign of the times and budgetary constraints.

This new year presents a new world of opportunity for me. I am continuing to teach adults in the area of Youth Work and I also plan to expand my social curiosity and engage with new groups, new work, new methods. A friend of mine, Tim Merry (http://www.myrgan.com) often uses a quote he picked up "No more prizes for predicting the rain, the pain, new starts, it's time to build the arks".
I'm excited about this journey, to see where the arks lead me to. Just like Bilbo Baggins in the movie The Hobbit, I'm going on an adventure.

If you want to be a part of something unknown, have the opportunity to dream of what could be, willing to experiment and be in the place you land, work with integrity and vision, Then I'd love to chat with you.

Bon Voyage!

King of the Redheads

What do you get when you bring a brother and sister together to plan a birthday party? A fundraiser for the Irish Cancer Society with a few hundred Red Heads together for Lots of whacky red madness.

Its called The Irish RedHead Convention and it is entering its 4th year in 2013. It takes place in August each year in the beautiful Cork village of Crosshaven. For the first time we are making it a weekend event to cater for the level of interest and to make sure we fit in all of the events we have planned.

What can you expect if you come along? Firstly, red heads, lots of them. Once you get over the initial realisation that you are sharing a space with so many of a minority who become the majority for the weekend, you can settle in to some live music in one of the bars, take part in the Crossroads Ceili or take to the Red Soap box to share your ginger musings. There will be air & sea rescue demonstrations by the appropriately Orange coloured RNLI lifeboat 'Miss Betty' and a movie screening in 'The Big House'. You can take part in Orange Lawn bowling or Carrot Tossing competitions and of course, enter one or more of our FoxyFest categories such as Best Red beard, most freckles per square inch, the best red dog, the youngest redhead and the Best Red Family among many more.

Being Ginger, Red, Carrot top or whatever you say is not only something that makes you unique but it is also a brand that a country and culture has sold itself on for generations. It is an attribute that people aspire to, wish they had and you could even say people are 'Dyeing' to be like us when you see how many shades of red are on sale in a bottle in your local pharmacy.

If you want to join in the fun and be a part of a World Record Attempt to bake the most gingerbread men in one go, you need to be in Crosshaven, County Cork between 23-25 August 2013.

We ARE The Gathering 2013 and this is the homecoming of the RedHeads. Be Part of it.
Www.redheadconvention.ie
Twitter: @IrishRedHeads
Facebook: RedHeadConvention

Battle of the Bulge - Week 5

*BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP - THE TIME IS 06.45, THE TEMPERATURE IS 5 DEGREES WITH SHOWERS, THE HEADLINES ARE...*
My alarm said, as it tends to do these mornings. My wife is 9 days away from giving birth to our first child, she wakes several times during the night and by the time my alarm shouts at me, she's so tired she can't hear it. I roll out of bed, throw on the tracksuit and a woolly hat, off I go for a 3 mile jog/walk.

I used to cal it a walk/jog, but recently I've noticed that once i'm warmed up, I can jog for longer than that dreaded first day when I struggled to run for more than 10 metres. The pain in my feet, the muscles around my shin burning and my mind asking me why am I not still in bed, tempting me to stop and say "I'll start tomorrow".

If you've battle(d) with the bulge you'll probably know what I mean. The physical battle is a tough one, you can only do what your body will allow you to do, but you can also do more than your mind tells your body it wants to do. Winning that battle when the mind tells you to stop, that's where you won the war. Looking up that hill or at the marker you set yourself, it's ten metres away and your mind says stop, but you keep going till you reach it, that's where you won the war.

Every time you tell yourself that you can't do it, you're right. Every time you tell yourself that you can do it, you're right. So which of these attitudes will get you the results you want?

My goal is to be able to get off the couch with minimum effort when my baby arrives into the world. I don't want to be struggling to reach him/her as they head for that coffee mug on the table, I want to be the dad who wants to play, who wants my child to have energy and a thirst for playful discovery. I want to be alive when my child is older, I want to be a part of their adult life.

The greatest gift I can give my wife, my child and myself, is to be healthy. Every morning that alarm goes off and I want to stay in bed, I just remember the goal, it becomes easier, it becomes enjoyable, it becomes routine. And, it works. I've lost 20lbs (just under 1.5 stone or almost 10 kilo) in five weeks.

Thanks to Paddy Cunningham www.ptpaddy.com for his expertise, encouragement and advice.

I'm losing it...

The Future...
I'm sitting on the couch enjoying something on TV, my baby is crawling towards the cup I left on the coffee table. I can see it coming but something is stopping me from preventing it. My minds eye knows that if I just reach forward to pick up the cup, the impending reality could be altered. I can't, it's not that I don't want to, it's just that I'm so unfit I can't move fast enough. I raise my voice and shout the baby's name as a distraction, to try and slow them down, it doesn't work. The baby is successful in this mission, as she will be in countless others through her life. She grabs the cup that is filled with hot liquid and tugs on it...

The Present...
I don't want that to be the reality of the future, well of course I want my child, She or He, to achieve countless missions they set out on, but the tugging on the cup, the not being able to get off the couch quick enough, the seeing what's coming and not being able to stop it, that's the bit I don't want.

So just like Marty McFly in Back To The Future, I know what is coming and I'm going to do something about it. The estate I grew up in had a man who owned a De Lorean car. I often wish he was still around so i could try what Marty did, t would save me hours of hard work and I could probably keep eating foods that I don't need and living a life non conducive to active fatherhood. Alas, he is not here and I need to do this the long way.

The Plan...
I will lose at least 3 stone (42 lbs) in weight by the time my unborn baby can crawl. We, my wife and I, are scheduled to meet our baby on 20th November. I intend by then, to be almost half way to my goal.

The Method...

• Number 1: Want it more than you want your current habits.
• Number 2: Listen to someone who knows something about it.
  "If it wasn't grown and it didn't live, do you need it" he said to me.  "Think of your goal about being a daddy" he said to me.
• Number 3: Do what someone who knows something about it tells you to do.
  "I want you to walk for 20-30 minutes every day" he said to me. "Don't eat bread this week" he said to me.

The Result...
In week one, with Numbers 1-3 above, I offloaded 8lbs. In week two, with numbers 1-3 above as well as 2 days with a little bit of jogging, about 15 minutes in total, I offloaded 5lbs.

Back to the future...

I'm on a gym programme now to help burn fat by increasing my internal furnace, AKA metabolism. I'll keep you posted, if you like?

*Special thanks to Paddy Cunningham for working with me on this. Visit his site http://www.ptpaddy.com/ 

Youth Work - Theory & Practice

Youth Work is not accidental. It is planned, structured, monitored and evaluated. It has a history, it is constantly changing and adapting to new realities. The world we live in now is very different, though connected, to the world of 50, 25, 10 years ago. Youth workers have the challenge of ensuring their practice meets the emerging needs of young people affected by changing society.

The following are some of the dominant models taught in Youth Work Studies in Ireland.

1.       Character Building – This was probably the foundation of youth work which came from the church groups like YMCA and around the same time, Scouts. That there was a moral obligation on those with education in society to help form the character of Young People. As Young People, especially men, moved from country to city during industrial revolution, they needed something to do other than drink and covort.

2.       Personal Development – Realising that Young People are individuals and need to have their needs met, a move from only building the character of the person, which was coming from the institutions of the day, to working with them to realize their potential. Which is different for each person, this model is still a dominant practice today.

3.       Critical Social Education – Young People are not, or at least should not, be mindless consumers who do what they are told and are seen but not heard. To encourage an independent mentality, I’ll break down the three words in my understanding. Critical = Thinking for themselves,  Social = Pro society & Community but carrying and asking questions about how it operates, Education = The first time Youth Work is seen as an Educational Process and not just a ‘Keep them off the streets’ facility.

4.       Radical Social Change – Where does power lay in society and how is it used? Does everyone benefit equally from the system we live in? What needs to change and how? This model of Youth Work is based on the belief that sections of society are deliberately oppressed to maintain a status quo and this is wrong. It promotes change in the way our systems operate to reflect a more fair distribution of resources.

In Ireland Youth Work Organisations are engaging with the National Quality Standards Framework (NQSF) and are having to articulate just how they carry out their work. It is imperative that youth workers are able to explain to people who may never have taken part in youth work activities, just what it is that they do. These models are a good starting point. To read about one organisation in Dublin and how they identify with the models click here http://www.thebase.ie/whatwedo/yth_workmodel.htm

To read more on the NQSF, see here http://www.dcya.gov.ie/viewdoc.asp?fn=/documents/Publications/NQSF_Summary_ENGLISH_270710.pdf

Fiscal Compact Referendum

I am starting to understand how the economics of this referendum are quite different to the politics of it.

I agree that our state should be keeping its debt to GDP ratio as low as possible, I'm bemused that we need to change our constitution to do it and enter into an agreement to be fined by the European Court of Justice should we fail to do it. Can't we manage our own home?

My reservations about a Yes vote, which I think will be the result, are compounded by what I have been reading and listening to, including the following:

Only 4 countries have so far ratified the treaty. I'm led to believe that there is a meeting of EU ministers in June, at which, changes may be made to the compact as it currently stands. We will have already ratified it.

Signing up to the Fiscal Pact does not guarantee bailout funds. Any other signatory to it can block an attempt to borrow from it.

We are still paying bondholders who invested in banks, lost in their gamble but get paid back anyway. On Monday 28th May, AIB paid out 2.25 Billion. In my opinion, it's not their cash to splash, we own them and shouldn't be rewarding bad gambles. As long as we are willing to pay back the failed investors, we will always need bailouts. I'm told not paying them will mean they won't invest in Ireland again. I say that unless we allow investors to fail they will continue to make bad investments and corrupt capitalism, as Freedman intends it.

This international agreement is here to stay, should we decided in the future that it's not in our interest to be in it, we can't get out of it.

We are being asked to do something (reduce debt to gdp @ maximum of 0.5% ) which is something we havent been able to do in the past. Since 1980 its averaged at 4%. So when the NO side says it is leading to more austerity, I can see why.

Yes, the question still remains, what's the alternative? We vote yes, we will need a bailout. We vote NO we will need a bailout. Maybe we should learn Chinese?