Best Practice: Amsterdam

During this experience I learnt that there are over 12,000 people with an African background and over 2,500 youth workers in the Netherlands

There is a larger number of youth workers compared to other countries

Almost everyone in the youth service, government and civil servants come from a white background and it made me question why this is?

I also discovered that more than half of youth workers are in community centres and only a small number of them are doing outreach, which made me question - is this because outreach is a new approach to youth work in Amsterdam

They have a new way of working there, which i individually (1:1)

Nearly all of the youth workers on the programme (from Amsterdam) didn't grow up in south east but work there now, it would be interesting to find out why they chose to work in this area now

There was a discussion about identity:

Why it's important for young people to understand who they are and what they stand for

I'm still interested in meeting black young people to hear if they feel as though their needs have been met and what more they think they need

After seeing presentations I would like to find out what age rang youth workers consider "young people"

It was good to see youth projects like to involve families in order to promote their positive message, being able to engage the parents in the projects seems as though it is a major key to the success of the projects

Another project empowered young people by showing them around the world and especially working with African diaspora, it again pushes young people to shape their indentity - Youth projects in the UK should do more of this