Open Youth Work: Empowering Young People in Gyumri

Open Youth Work: Empowering Young People in Gyumri

Date: 01-10-2018 - 31-10-2019
Status: Completed
Funder: STRONG Civil Society Organisations for Stronger Armenia project’s Small Grants Scheme; co-funded by European Union
Impact area: Capacity Building Youth
Open Youth Work: Empowering Young People in Gyumri

Project Description

The goal of the project is to enhance civic activity and well-being among the youth in Armenia through modelling and promoting innovative approaches to youth work and youth participation.

Specific objectives are to:
  • Increase accessibility of youth services: free multi-disciplinary services will be provided to at least 600 marginalized young people in Gyumri through a youth centre built upon Open Youth Work (OYW) methodology.
  • Raise the quality of youth work services provided by state and non-state actors through capacity building measures to be carried out for 200 professionals in Gyumri who are engaged in youth-work and related fields.
  • Ssupport institutional development of Open Youth Work (OYW) in Armenia through evaluating the existing practices and policy development at local and national levels.
In this initiative, CRRC-Armenia is partnering with the Gyumri “Youth Initiative Centre” NGO that is the Lead Partner.

Research Design

 
An open youth work approach as a form of social work will be piloted in Armenia through setting up and operating an Open Youth Work centre in Gyumri, and intending to develop it on a larger scale in the future. It will offer a variety of activities to young people and concurrently will carry out capacity development, monitoring and Evaluation, and advocacy activities for relevant stakeholders.
Within that framework, CRRC-Armenia will be involved in the following activities: thematic capacity building trainings and workshops for state and non-state actors engaged in youth work; Week-long schools for youth work researchers and practitioners; Supervision/coaching/guidance  of Data-collection through a unified Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) system;  Desk research of European models of OYW; impact study on Centre’s activity; a thematic forum with participation of 40 representatives of the stakeholder groups and target audiences.
In addition, a package of evidence-based policy recommendations will be developed and submitted to the RA Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs, RA Ministry of Sport and Youth Affairs, Gyumri Municipality and other relevant stakeholders.

Outputs (not available yet)

  • Final Document of the Desk Research Findings
  • Adjusted-to the-local-context Model for Youth Centre operations
  • OYW Package of Evidence-based Policy Recommendations
  • Pre-, mid- and post-evaluation questionnaires
  • One Unified Data-collection and Monitoring System
  • Impact Assessment Report