What’s new in this issue?

“I see a very positive and enormous power in training and in trainers: they can contribute with their work to building a better society”, Miguel Angel Garcia Lopez writes in his article for Coyote. But, he adds, “trainers have this kind of power only if their training has a real influence afterwards in reality”. The articles in this issue give examples of how trainers make their training programmes relevant for their participants and for the societies they work in, in working with minorities in the Netherlands, implementing the Youth For Europe Programme in Estonia, or – in quite a different context – preparing soldiers for a peace-supporting mission in Kosovo. Other articles deal with some of the challenges for the relationship between trainers and participants in a training course. Theatre of the Oppressed is one method in training, which can help participants to recognise how they can become stronger actors of their own lives also in difficult and conflictual situations.

The methodological reflections, training strategies and results described in these articles point to the question that Caroline Vink poses in her article: Looking at the different ways in which youth work successfully prepares young people for active participation in society and contributes to social development, should young people get official recognition for youth work? And if so, what could this recognition look like? What do you think?

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