January 2010 Please note that some links may have expired due to the ever-changing nature of the Internet. Let us know if you find anything unexpected or offensive so we can remove or change a link. Youthwork magazine and CCP ltd are not responsible for the content of external sites accessed from youthwork.co.uk Relationships that make a difference Because building relationships is fundamental in working with young people, John Allan scans the web to help you reflect on the subject. ‘A long-term relationship with a caring adult can change a young person’s life.’ That was the conclusion of a famous American government report in 1988. Friendships really matter to teenagers as nothing else does: they’re in the middle of trying to work out who they really are, and as part of that they become super-sensitive to how they’re treated and valued by others. No wonder so much of youth work is about building relationships, healing them, challenging and extending them. In fact, you could say that one gigantically important measure of the youth work you do is the kind of relationships you nurture. So have you done much thinking about the subject recently? I imagine most of us spend so much time doing the job that we don’t have a lot of time to reflect on it. But sometimes it’s good to look at the insights of others and ask: how does my practice match up? For example, on the Web you’ll find all sorts of stimulating and provoking ideas. The Freechild Project is dedicated to developing the leadership of young people, and on their website there are stacks of articles analysing how adults patronise kids, and what they should do instead. John Bell’s Understanding Adultism is a good place to start. The American National Collaboration for Youth has put together a training manual for ‘Developing Positive Relationships with Youth’: topics include ‘Clicking with Youth’, ‘Active Listening’, ‘Defining Relationships’, ‘Promoting Positive Peer Relationships’. Some useful ideas here for training games and exercises with your team. A lot of good thinking comes from America, so it’s no surprise to see the University of Minnesota producing materials on Eight Keys to Quality Youth Development – one of which is ‘Youth Develop Quality Relationships with Peers and Adults’. Some of it’s a bit obvious and even cheesy, but you’re brought up short every so often by a searching question, a telling quotation, or an unexpected nugget of wisdom. Well worth a skim. WikiHow is an interactive, editable how-to manual on everything under the sun, written and corrected by thousands of volunteers. Its ‘Youth’ section is written exclusively by young people themselves; so it’s an absorbing trip into what teenagers themselves make of the key relationships in their lives. There’s an article on everything: from ‘Being popular at a British school’ to ‘Being tough yet feminine’ to ‘Dealing with conflict with parents’. Great group discussion starters, too, if you read some of it out to your own kids. Suite101 is ‘the world’s most comprehensive online magazine’, with over 230,000 monthly articles. Not surprisingly, there’s a section on parents and teenagers too, which contains brief but thought-provoking stabs at topics as varied as cyberbullying, wisdom teeth removal, discipline, and what Goths are really about. Each article won’t take you long, but the whole thing might: the links from article to article keep you clicking around for quite a while. And it’s time well spent. The more reflective wisdom you accumulate, the more likely you are to become the caring adult that changes a young person’s life. YOUTUBE PARABLES If you can’t afford a Ferrari, why not knit one? That’s what Lauren Porter did. As the video shows, it’s an amazing feat... but also a stupendous amount of time, skill and care lavished on a totally useless project. How many people spend their lives that way? Are there links to Luke 12:16-21 here? EFFICIENCY EXPERT If you have a broadband connection, check out Webasyst, a suite of nine online applications that lets you do most of your work at one address – uploading pictures, writing documents, keeping notes, storing files, managing projects, saving contact information. You can let others see your work and collaborate with you. I especially like Pages, the easiest possible way of writing a training manual online; I’m going to use this to create materials for my own group at school. Oh, and it’s free. TEACH IT Suppose you were teaching Luke 12:16-21. How could you illustrate it effectively? Well, show them what the fabulously wealthy spend money on – e.g. Lakshmi Mittal’s bus. Talk about the wealth of Bill Gates (monitored daily at his Wealth Clock). Screen the ITN report about how much the ultra-rich suddenly lose in recessions. Focus on the story of Viv Nicholson, who said she was going to ‘spend, spend, spend’, but lost her happiness through it all. And show them the Bible story in an unusual format – told as a computer game, or in an unsettlingly Teletubbies-style cartoon landscape... John Allan is based at Belmont Chapel, Exeter, UK, and is a regular contributor to Youthwork magazine. Back to main page