10.1 General context
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High-quality youth work is a prerequisite for ensuring optimal development and practice of young people. Youth organisations, youth services and youth workers, together with relevant stakeholders, plan and implement activities and programmes that are relevant to the interests, needs and experiences of young people. The Ministry of Youth and Sports has been continuously working for the better recognition and improvement of the quality of youth work and the validation of the role of youth workers.
Since 2019, the Ministry of Youth and Sports has been implementing a project for development and introduction of quality standards for provision of youth services in Bulgaria funded under the Human Resources Operational Program. The main objective of the project is to improve the accessibility, efficiency and quality of youth services through the development, introduction and approbation of quality standards, among others, for the following services: mobile youth work and digital youth work.
Experts from the Youth Policy Department take part in various EU level initiatives on youth work, such as the Bonn Process, expert groups of the European Commission, etc.
In November 2021, a National Working Group for Youth Work was established and administered by the Ministry of Youth and Sports with the involvement of various stakeholders – representatives of ministries, youth work researchers and practitioners, representatives of youth organisations, academic society.
National definition or undertanding of Youth Work
There is no legal definition of youth work.