Youth Work in Schools

There is hardly a youth work organisation in Berlin that does not cooperate with one or more schools. This collaboration has many faces:

• Youth education centres hold weekly seminars with school classes on political, cultural and work-related topics,

• Youth recreational facilities develop projects together with children and young people at schools on topics relating to their living environment,

• Children’s and youth offices work together with student representatives to strengthen the participation and involvement of young people,

• Youth associations organise projects and seminars aimed at helping young people organise themselves.

Youth work fulfils its own educational mandate in cooperation with schools. With the support of social workers, young people are offered educational opportunities that are based on their interests and needs and open up for them possibilities to create, experience and participate. Children and young people take part voluntarily in the youth work programmes organised in cooperation with schools.

With the state programme for youth work in schools, youth work activities, for example school clubs, are specifically located in schools and in the vicinity of schools. The target group is primarily children and young people aged 11 to 16, i.e. students in grades 5 and 6 of primary schools and lower secondary school (7-10) of secondary schools. Older primary school students are generally less likely to be reached by after-school care than younger ones.

Youth work in schools aims at the regional socio-spatial networking of youth work facilities, other areas of youth welfare, schools and other institutions that are important to the education of young people.

The youth welfare organisations and the schools jointly decide on the financing of the programmes on the basis of the district framework concepts. In order to provide better material equipment for the programmes and to ensure that the content is coordinated, the youth welfare offices and the school sector each provide 20 percent of the funding.