23 April 2018

We are present at the conference “Non-formal youth work and formal youth studies”, Yerevan, Armenia


Starting from 20th of April, 4 youth workers representing GEYC are in Yerevan, Armenia, participating in the “Non-formal youth work and formal youth studies” conference, organized by the Federation of Youth Clubs of Armenia. For 4 days, young people and youth workers from 13 countries have gathered to discuss about the topics of youth work and youth studies in each of their country, in order to set the ground for the development of an international Youth Studies curricula.



The first day was dedicated to presenting the project to local media and on this occasion, our representative, Alexandra Peca - InYouS Project Responsible in Romania, gave a short interview to Armenpress: 

“When we did the research about our country’s youth studies experience, we found out that there are not many educational programs for youth workers. There is a strong need for these kind of programs and we came here to share our experience and to learn more about the other countries’ background in the field of youth work. We want to create an international course for youth workers.”, said Alexandra to the Armenian press.


Alexandra Peca - InYouS Project Responsible in Romania (first to the right), next to other participants
Madalina Vlasie, member of EFYL- European Fellowship on Youth Leadership, said that "this conference offers the participants the posibility to know better the development of youth work studies in more than 10 countries. I find it very interesting to see that even though the concept of youth worker is well known for quite some years, its recognition is still in the early development."

Mr. Atom Mkhitaryan, the president of FYCA, the organization which initiated this project, said that „in Armenia, non-formal education is not competitive and we are worried about it. We have decided to do something about it. (...) The purpose is to study the experience, approaches and research from different countries.”


The participant countries in the InYouS project


Before coming here, every country had to make a research about their youth studies experience, which we presented in the second part of the day. The presentations made room for a lot of debate and we tried to find similarities between our countries in the field of youth work.
Andreea Galatanu and Andreea Mitu talking about the Youth Studies experience in Romania

Madalina Vlasie presenting the outcome of a group project

Alexandra Peca talking about the Youth Work History in Romania


This conference is the first stage of a complex project, “International Youth Studies: Curricula, Distance learning course and open educational materials”, developed under Erasmus+ KA2: Capacity Building in the field of youth - Eastern Partnership - Civil Society Fellowships for youth. The project is developed by the Federation of Youth Clubs of Armenia and its partners. During the next days, our representatives, together with the other participants, will work together to prepare the next stages of the project.

The participants to the conference  “Non-formal youth work and formal youth studies”




The full article in Armenian can be consulted here.
For more information about the project, head over to geyc.ro/inyous