Linnégatan 21, 3 tr.
413 04 Göteborg
Sweden
- Youth and education
KEKS is a network for municipalities and others who run open youth work and our overall aim is to increase the quality in youth work.
We are steadily growing and currently consist of 61 Swedish, 7 Slovenian and 3 Finnish local departments for youth work.
The network is based on cooperation around common aims, documentation, follow up and competence development.
We support our members in KEKS when it comes to documentation, follow up and quality development of youth work. We do this mainly by providing a system for documentation and follow-up and organizing different activities for competence development. Our starting point is as follows: youth centres, clubs, youth projects, etc., should work as tools in a positive, social development aimed at all youth.
Our overall idea is to promote the personal and social growth of youth. We want to act as an arena for learning where the experiences and interests of young people are nurtured in such a way that they experience engagement, meaningfulness and a sense of hope for the future.
We see young people as the main resource in their own lives, and all activities should therefore be built on their active participation and sense of responsibility.
We want to be an arena for learning where the experiences and interests of young people are nurtured in such a way that they experience engagement, meaningfulness and a sense of hope for the future. We see young people as the main resource in their own lives, and all activities should therefore be built on their active participation and sense of responsibility.
Based on these principal ideas we have created a set of common and clear goals that are measurable and easy to follow up on.
In order to see how well we meet our goals we carry out an annual survey where we among other things ask our visitors if they feel that they are being treated as resources and are being supported to participate and take responsibility. (We received more than 8500 responses from a total of 200 different youth centres in 2019). In 2010 we also implemented a web based group survey for on-going monitoring on how young people experience their participation in groups and different youth projects.
Every year we also accumulate costs and visitor statistics in the form of quantitative indicator charts. Staff and young people at every youth centre are presented the results pertaining to their centre, in order to discuss the findings together and develop suggestions on how to improve their activities.
KEKS is also engaged in research on youth work issues such as participation and non-formal learning and has continuous contacts with researchers, universities and educators of youth workers.
KEKS has also published a number of booklets on youth work and youth work methods.
KEKS is experienced in both organizing international projects as well as in organizing courses, workshops and seminars related to the topic of the proposed project and has. KEKS is organizing between 4-8 big seminars a year that approaches different topics related to youth work (e.g. inclusion, participation, marginalized youngsters, documentation of youth work etc.).
KEKS also organize regular courses and workshops on the methods that KEKS uses (e.g. The Logbook – web based system for documentation and follow-up of youth work; ELD - discussion and reflection method for documenting non-formal education competences).
KEKS is supporting and educating their members in the method ELD (Experience Learning Description) that aims to validate and to make visible the non-formal learning achieved in youth work. www.eldkompetens.se
Jonas Agdur, founder of KEKS and chairman InterCity Youth (ICY), has also been chairman of the European expert group on youth work quality systems. InterCity youth is a European network for local departments of youth work consisting of over 400 European cities with the aim to enhance the quality of youth work in the EU membership states.