From September 2014 to March 2015, the Institute for Youth Development KULT is organising a training course for Youth Workers (Associate Expert for Youth Work). Youth Workers are persons who assist youth in the process of their growth and development, by working with them in youth centres and clubs, youth organisations, but also in government institutions such as social work centres. In 2014 the Institute advocated the recognition of the youth worker profession, resulting in a decision by the Agency for Statistics to recognise it in the Classification of Occupations under the number 3412. This is an important step in standardising youth work and represents a form of social acknowledgment not only of youth work a profession, but of non-formal education as a type of professional training. In addition, future Youth Workers will have an opportunity to develop a business plan for supporting centres/clubs or organisations with up to 6000 BAM. More information is stated in the application form and on the infographics below.

The Institute for Youth Development KULT participated the„BE THE KEY: Empowering European Youth Workers through Conflict Management Skills“ training course, held from May 5 – 13, 2014 at the European Youth Centre in Sajan (Serbia), organised by CULTURE GOES EUROPE (CGE) - Soziokulturelle Initiative Erfurt.

The training course aimed to equip young people with practical skills to intervene and to deal with conflicts in their local community and environment, bringing out positive outcomes for learning and change. The training course intends to develop their competences contributing to a spirit of mutual understanding and respect at a local, national and European level.

Youth workers play a significant role when it comes to supporting youth in facing private, social and intercultural conflicts. During the eight-day training course, the trainers, Marija Farmer and Sylvia Schmidt discussed various types of conflicts, experience exchange, good practice examples, strategies and methods of managing conflicts and developing common strategy applicable in all local communities, all through non-formal learning methods such as plenary session discussions, simulations, etc. Therefore, this was an opportunity for the participants to gain new knowledge and provide information on the current position of their countries.

23 participants from Croatia, Czech Republic, Germany, Greece, Italy, Macedonia, Montenegro, Portugal, Serbia, Spain and Bosnia and Herzegovina attended the seminar. 

On May 27, 2014, the Project team welcomed Skoogh Pierre i Strandh Julia, representatives of the Kommunal Stockholms Lan (Swedish Municipal Workers’ Union for the Stockholm Region) to the offices of the Institute for Youth Development KULT. The focus of the meeting were the Institute’s current projects, with special emphasis on youth leaders, Youth Officers and yourh work experts. The guests were presented with the results achieved so far and shown a video about the UMiD – Learn, Think and Act! training course. During the meeting, there was also a special discussion about future cooperation between the Kommunal Stockholms Lan and the Institute, which will most certainly be established through common efforts on organizing youth related activities and through an exchange of experiences. Representatives of the Kommunal Stockholms Lan had an opportunity to visit the Educational-Leisure Centre for Youth SPAJALICA. We are certain that exchanging experiences will allow us to learn from each other, and use examples of good practices in our future work. 

The fourth meeting of Olof Palme International Centre (OPC) was held in Stockholm (Sweden), May 12-13, 2014. The topic of the meeting were communication skills, providing non-governmental organisations from Sweden and BiH an opportunity to exchange experiences and use social networks more efficiently for promoting their activities.