YOCOMO - Being Civically Engaged behaviours - European Training Strategy

Being civically engaged

…means being aware of and taking a principled stance on political and societal issues affecting young people, challenging power dynamics, supporting value-based processes, co-creating with young people and encouraging their critical civic engagement in their communities, in Europe and beyond.

The single behaviours are summarised in different headlines that illustrate what “being civically engaged” means for youth workers behaviour-wise. The “cluster headlines” do not name behaviours as such; these can be found through clicking on the lists.

It is crucial to create diversity-aware spaces in which learning from each other, as well as cooperation and collaboration can take place. + -

Thus, youth workers:

work to engage young people of different backgrounds in social and political dialogue
encourage young people to connect with their in-group (bonding), with others (bridging) and those in power (linking)

Youth workers need to face up to and overcome obstacles and minimise risks. + -

They need:

to address challenges to young people’s engagement (e.g. fake news and other types of misinformation ) and their impact on political and social developments
to actively work on overcoming structural and systemic obstacles to critical youth civic engagement
to assess and address potential risks when supporting young people in their critical civic engagement to ensure their safety

(Self-) reflection and how one acts and presents oneself are the foundation of working towards civic engagement with young people + -

This requires youth workers:

to self-reflect on their identity, values, privilege, power, and power relations, and ways in which they manifest
to role-model advocacy by speaking out against injustice in a socially responsible and effective manner
to work with young people to co-create ways to address local and global, progressive social and human rights issues

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