Welcome to the A-Kit! The Advocacy kit for youth work development and recognition is designed to provide practical tools and resources for those advocating for the recognition and development of youth work at local, national and European levels.

It aims to empower the youth work community of practice with knowledge, strategies and tools for effective advocacy, to promote the value of youth work and support its long-term development. The A-Kit is built upon European policy frameworks and standards.

The A-Kit is designed to support users in identifying an issue in relation to youth work that they would like to address, to assess whether advocacy is a suitable method and if the answer is yes, to offer practical know-how and tools to support their advocacy efforts.

The Advocacy Kit aims to support users by offering:

  • a practical advocacy toolbox to the youth work community of practice. It provides a set of offline and online tools for youth workers, organisations and policy makers to support youth work development and recognition in their respective countries. It helps to ensure that youth work is recognised, supported, and made widely available;
  • a resource for competence development on advocacy and communicating about youth work. It provides advocacy planning templates, and guidelines, as well as inspirational case studies and useful evidence-based arguments for youth work;

  • an adaptable-to-context approach to advocacy for youth work development and recognition. It includes adaptable tools that can be tailored to national contexts, contributing to youth work advocacy in countries with a range of emerging to established youth work structures;

  • a support to youth work visibility and collaboration between youth work practice, policy and research, as well as cross-sectoral. It refers to related policy instruments of the European institutions and to the Youth Partnership’s existing tools.

Target group

This kit is designed for a wide range of stakeholders, including:

  • youth workers who wish to enhance the recognition of their profession and impact;
  • youth organisations advocating for policy change and greater support;.
  • policy makers working to align national strategies with European youth work policies;
  • cross-sectoral stakeholders interested in understanding and supporting youth work advocacy.

Background

The Council of Europe Recommendation on youth work and the EU Council Resolution on the European Youth Work Agenda (EYWA) both provide comprehensive guidelines for youth work development on national levels. At the same time, to achieve considerable improvements, it is essential to build capacities of the youth work community of practice and practitioners in advocacy. The outcomes of the Visible Value symposium: Growing youth work in Europe in 2023, as well at the two regional seminars on youth work development in 2022 and 2023, and other consultations have also highlighted this need for supporting advocacy efforts. 

Therefore, building on the accumulated experience and existing knowledge, the Youth Partnership developed the A-kit, a set of practical tools for advocacy to be used by all actors in the youth field. The toolkit is adaptable to different contexts (countries with emerging or well-established youth work structures), and a specific attention is paid to the promotion of the EYWA and a participative public dialogue about its implementation. 

The A-kit was developed between April 2024 and January 2025. The  process included an online expert meeting to draft the initial concept, an expert seminar and preparatory meeting to work on the content and format, and the final stage of working with a group of consultants and researchers to develop the final A-kit.