Recognition

Pathways paper

"Pathways 2.0 towards recognition of non-formal learning/education and of youth work in Europe" (2011, FR, DE) is a Working Paper of the partnership between the European Commission and the Council of Europe in the field of youth, elaborated jointly with the SALTO Training and Cooperation Resource Centre, the European Youth Forum and the Directorates responsible for Youth in the European Commission and the Council of Europe. It replaces the milestone working paper "Pathways towards validation and recognition of education, training & learning in the youth field" (2004).

Six years after publishing the first Pathways paper and more than 10 years after starting the development and implementation of respective strategies to better recognise non-formal education/learning, the partnership team of the Council of Europe and the European Commission in the field of youth, in cooperation with the European Youth Forum and the SALTO Training and Cooperation Resource Centre, realised the need to update and re-focus the strategy as outlined in the first paper, in order to give the strategy a new impetus for a better recognition of non-formal learning in youth activities and of youth work in general. The initiative to re-dynamise the efforts on recognition goes also back to the European workshop "Continue the pathways towards recognition…." held in Prague in June 2008 under the Czech EU Presidency, where the participants invited and encouraged the EU-CoE youth partnership to take the lead in updating the strategy.

Both institutions sustaining the EU-CoE youth partnership, European Commission and Council of Europe were closely associated to the redrafting of the paper. Reflecting the participatory nature of youth policy, the current paper was developed together with youth organisations, the main providers of non-formal education in the youth field, mainly represented by the European Youth Forum. A further number of stakeholders were involved in the reflection when starting to re-draft this paper such as National Agencies and SALTO Resource Centers of the Youth in Action Programme, the communities of trainers and researchers as well as policy-makers from various levels and backgrounds.