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1. Quality assurance

2. Research and evidence supporting Youth Work

3. Participate Youth Work

4. Smart youth work: youth work in the digital world

Quality assurance

The title "NGO recognised by the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports for providing quality youth work."

The title is awarded within the sub-programme of Grant Schemes by the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports for supporting youth work in NGOs. It is awarded by the minister responsible for youth upon the decision of the Selection Committee. It is linked to the amendment to the "Governmental Rules for providing grants from the state budget to non-profit, non-governmental organisations by the central public bodies" (since 2014 this amendment enables the Ministry to make an agreement on long-term cooperation with selected youth NGOs). About 18 NGOs are holders of this title, plus the Czech Council for Children and Youth as the main strategic partner for the Ministry is granted with the title on a long-term basis.

Youth NGOs awarded with the title have to meet the following 15 criteria:

• the NGO has to exist at least 5 years;
• has to have organisational units at least in 3 regions;
• has youth work covered in the Status;
• has clearly defined its organisational structure and clearly described processes in the organisation;
• makes public their Annual Reports including financial statistics;
• has elaborated Strategic Development Plan including description of learning perspective – objectives, methods and forms of youth work;
• has no problems in the field of financial clearance;
• has no crime files;
• performs systematic PR towards the public;
• activities are provided not only to its own members but also to other target groups – it is open to everyone;
• supports volunteering;
• is actively inclusive and open to vulnerable young people, disadvantaged young people and young people with fewer opportunities;
• provides regular training courses to youth leaders and youth workers which are accredited by educational institutions;
• has professional and sufficient staff for providing activities – at least 60% of educational staff has certificate of attending accredited training courses.

Holders of the title are obliged to submit the complete Annual Report to the Youth Department of the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports. Youth Department submits audit controls at a random basis.

Research and evidence supporting Youth Work

There hasn't been any significant research done in this field since 2012 for the state. Neither a system of continuous documentation, nor a study of youth work was initiated, requested or managed by public bodies recently. The same applies to national research structures researching youth work. 

However, the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports is implementing the National Register of research on children and youth carried out by Universities, NGOs and other private providers. 

Since the end of 2016, The Czech Council of Children and Youth (National Youth Council, Non-governmental structure) started to operate an Analytical Center as a small unit dealing with the information, data and knowledge about youth work, youth policy and youth in cooperations with universities, researchers, private as well as public institutions and organisations. To date it has run a couple of surveys, supported mainly by the Erasmus+ programme. The most significant would be a Czech-Slovak research on the Youth Values (Hodnoty mladých). The most recent results of surveys done in cooperation with Kantar deal with the subjects of the Young people's access to leisure time and the Attitudes of young people to children and youth organisations.

Participative youth work

Information on the participation of young people in general policymaking is described in chapter 5.4. There are no specifics for youth work comparing to youth policy. The quality Youth Work should be based in principle on the young people's participation. 

"Smart" youth work: youth work in the digital world

There are no specific national-wide initiatives to support digital youth work from the side of the government.

However, due to COVID-19, some new youth NGO initiatives/tools have emerged in the recent years, such as Levitio App supporting youth groups in operating in the digital world. These initiatives are not coordinated or specially supported by the state though. A research is currently being conducted on the on-line activism of young people, however, it seems that it will bring only modest results. 

There was a State Strategy on Digital Education till 2020; however, it did not deal with Youth Work specifically. 

Youth organisations usually use digital technologies for communication and promotions, which was especially accelerated during the COVID-19 pandemic, when youth organizations very often sustained their activities in online space and developed also many digital projects and activities.  

As an example, we can pick, the Face2Art project. It was implemented by an NGO HUDEBNÍ MLÁDEŽ (Jeunesses Musicales) Czech Republic and gives to young people from 13 to 23 years of their age an opportunity to present themselves as artists with their own pieces of art as well as to gain new artistic experience. They can enhance their artistic skills at:

• producing/making art
• perceiving/analysing art
• reflecting upon arts/culture (production as well as perception) in seven art disciplines

The platform for presentation is a virtual gallery where the pieces of art are exhibited and 'fans' can vote for them in the contest. Each discipline has a patron (a well-known artist) who comments on the best entries in the contest and becomes a personal mentor to the best participants. The online component of the project  is balanced with offline activities, namely when  young people participating in the project are invited to take part in several workshops and meetings and thus meet the online community face-to-face.

In 2018, The national network of certified youth information centres got an assignment from the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports. Their task was to prioritise building up digital competencies of youth workers / leaders as well as leisure-time-based educators in their submitted projects within the Grant Scheme for Youth Information Centres in 2018. However, for later years, the support has stopped. 

Activities supported in 2018 were as follows:

• creating video-programmes which promote digital youth work;
• providing youth information centres with game consoles of virtual reality and sharing them within the national network of youth information centres with an aim to get young people familiar with new and so far not widely accessible digital technologies;
• creating training opportunities on digital and media literacy for youth workers in youth information centres including educational materials usable also for schools;
• developing project "Digital citizenship" which would cover issues such as digital identity cards, digitalisation of public services, digital elections etc.;
• organising roundtable discussions on digital competencies in youth work in regions;
• issuing Inspiromat "Competencies for the 21st century" devoted to the digitalisation of youth work (the National Youth Information Centre is the issuing body).