asbo's take on current youth work culture
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Category Archives: Youthwork
Factor in faith
NCVYS became the first voluntary organisation to pledge adherence to five key principles that will result in a breakdown of barriers for young people who traditionally do not participate in services for reasons associated with their faith. The principles are part of Factor in faith, a practical guide for voluntary youth organisations to make their services more accessible to young people from all communities regardless of their faith, race or culture launched by NCVYS at its annual conference on 7 November. For more info go here
bling
Dave loved bling; in fact he wore it from head to toe. A diamond ear stud, a chunky silver neck chain, an identity bracelet. He even had a custom made pair of cufflinks engraved with his initials. He had bling for all occasions and to co-ordinate with all outfits.
One day Dave was on his way to the local record store when he saw something glittering out the corner of his eye. There in the shop window glinted the biggest, glitziest piece of bling Dave had ever seen. It was a large sovereign ring with the most enormous diamond. It was fantastic, as was the price tag! It was way too expensive for Dave to buy on his meagre wages. He looked with longing at the ring but it was no good; he just couldn’t afford it.
Later that night Dave sat in his room. He had been thinking about that ring all day. Every conversation he had he ended up talking about it, he day dreamed about it. He even drove passed the shop on his way home from work even though it was dark and the security shutters were down.
He looked at the boxes of bling neatly lined up on the table in front of him. He opened them one by one, picking up and looking at each prized piece of jewellery, an idea slowly forming in his mind.
The next day Dave took his boxes of bling and went to the jewellers where he had seen the ring. He asked if he could try it on, it looked amazing, it sparkled and glinted and he knew everyone would be right jealous if he had that ring on his finger. Carefully Dave placed his boxes of bling on the counter, opening each one to show the jeweller his collection. The jeweller agreed that Dave could swap the ring for all his treasured bling and having shaken hands to seal the deal, Dave left the shop a very happy man.
When the mayor gave out the ASBO’s the young people thought he had great bling, which reminded me of the story.
I thought this worth a post
Many thanks for your comments to Richard Passmore via facebook. I was encouraged by your response to the ASBO’d certificate.
I have to say that your comments/reflections re ASBO’s had occured to me in the development of the idea and i did consciously go ahead with the certificate ‘as is’ for a few reasons.
Firstly I wanted to get reaction – to create the debate and make people think – those who are like yourself and understand that we are not necessarily saying ASBO’s don’t work (even though the jury is out in terms of some of the research – see my comments below) are likely to forgive us and think of the greater good – those who don’t understand are likely to engage in debate with us and at that point we can share our perspective and underline the concern about stigmatising young people (see Richard’s comment). I think advertisers are using this ploy all the time – satire does seem to work well.
Secondly I wanted to capitalize on the ‘dark’ idea that some would see ASBO as a ‘badge of honour’ by turning it into a ‘light’ idea – eg we want to honour young people by naming them as Alright Sensational Beautiful Original – I think they will get it and it is unlikely that it will undermine the ‘ASBO campaign’ – we will monitor reaction to check as you make a good point and we don’t want to seriously undermine authentic protection for anyone
Thirdly – I want to keep the overall debate about the usefulness of personally humiliating people with ASBO’s alive – if we genuinely believe that many of the social ills that young people engage in are a outcome of nurture rather than nature – why don’t we chose to publically humilate our systems as well as individuals? (perhaps this is another idea for FYT!!) My personal view (not an FYT position) is that the power that the police and legal systems had in ‘injunctions’ was enough to deal with protecting people and that the ASBO is more rooted in naming and shaming individuals – as it follows a political pattern that has been evolving in education and many human services (league tables etc) over the last 10 years – it seems to me to be most unhelpful to tag a label on individuals who are already believing the wrong things about themselves. I think there are many other more positive ways that the government could choose to use to make families and communities safer and feel more supported – without resorting to the use of personal and systemic humiliation.
Do hope this helps – your comment are very helpful thanks and you have made me wonder if we should say some of this publically – however I do want to keep debate going!
shalom – dave wiles (CEO – Frontier youth Trust)
update
VOLUNTARY SECTOR FUNDING – A number of discussion papers were commissioned by the Office of the Third Sector during the Government’s Third Sector Review. These include ‘Improving small scale grant funding for local voluntary and community organisations’. See www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/third_sector/research_statistics/discussion_papers.asp. Meanwhile in its recent report Hearts and Minds: commissioning from the voluntary sector, (see last issue of Youth News) the Audit Commission said there was no evidence councils were reducing total expenditure on grants. It claimed they were merely “aligning their grant giving better with their strategic prioritiesâ€?. However, Kevin Curley, chief executive of Navca, has written to Steve Bundred, the commission’s chief executive, to dispute that claim. He said it did not accord with a Navca survey of local infrastructure organisations in 2006 that found 27 per cent of local authorities were no longer providing grant aid to local organisations. His letter read: “We do have to question the basis on which you reached your conclusion about local authority grant aid. Of the 14 authorities you surveyed, only nine provided you with information about grants. Of the nine, five had increased grant aid between 2002/03 and 2004/05 and four had reduced it. This represents a very small sample and does not appear to us to support the conclusion you reachedâ€?.
COMMUNITY ASSETS PROGRAMME – this is a £30m fund from the Office of the Third Sector and delivered by the Big Lottery Fund to enable third sector organisations to have greater control over the assets they use, such as community buildings. It will facilitate the transfer of genuine assets from local authorities to third sector organisations for their use as community resources. The programme will offer grants of between £150,000 and £1 million for refurbishment of local authority buildings, including community centres and other multi-purpose facilities, so they can benefit both local communities and the third sector organisations that take them on. There will be a single bidding round for all applications, which closes on 15th November 2007. Application details can be seen at www.biglotteryfund.org.uk/prog_community_assets.htmPhenomena
Sharing Mission Across Boundaries
I’ve been involved for a few years now with an inter-church youth work in our town. Perhaps the biggest challenge it has given me is “on what basis can a shared, inter-church, mission take place?”
Richard’s post the other day about equality Bone Dry the movie has inspired me to think about how a work can happen in an inter-church context.
Our natural tendency is to want to own the mission that we are involved in, and similarly if we are funding something we also want to own it and have a good deal of say in how that mission happens. When stakeholders are from different churches they might feel different things about how mission should work and they might feel different pressures from those in their churches, so it is perhaps more difficult to reconcile differences and come to agreement over what should happen.
I think that what an inter-church mission can be is:
- A resource.
- A part of reducing divides between different churches.
- An invitation to work in a way that has the side effect of breaking down division.
- A challenge to work with people we do not necessarily see eye to eye with.
- An opportunity to learn submission.
- An opportunity to fit into a jigsaw over which we do not have control.
- A way of learning to accept what others have to give, without pushing them to give what we think they should.
Perhaps our biggest challenge is to give up some of the control mechanisms that we are used to having in our smaller, individual churches. This does make us more vulnerable to the actions of others, but perhaps we are also becoming more vulnerable to God and his will as we learn to relinquish our own ideas!
I do find it scary and I’m convinced there is a lot, lot more to learn about this. I feel like a fearful newbie to be honest, but at least I can look back and see the work God has enabled so far.
relationships of equality
Yesterday Iain (BCYM) was running a session for line managers and said a throw away phase that caught my imagination. In line management we needed to have “relationships of equality rather than relationships of power”. A great phrase that says a lot about management style and approach, good to keep in mind as we approach others. It also reminds me a Transactional Analysis and how much better management is when you have adult to adult conversations.
The issue is how easy it is to revert to power bases particularly when you are in a hurry or have loads of expectations from others. Couple of other interesting points came up. Paul rasied the issue about how often ministers/ clergy are metaphoriacally seen as more “white” coller staff, professional expecting to manage their hours themsleves etc, but other staff can be seen as “blue coller” needing to clock in and out, request time off etc.
Labels
There is a great video here The Wackness dvd Invasion of the Body Snatchers movie . Take five minutes to view it.
Greebelt
Are you going to Greenbelt? FYT will be hosting a daily ‘Afternoon Tea’ session at the Tiny Tea Tent at 3pm for youth workers to come along and share their experiences, meet other people or just chill out together. Anyone want to catch up?
Static Skate and Ride
On Aug 18th we are running this event with One eighty to highlight the need for Lights at chard skate park and present the Town council a DVD and Powerpoint outlining the case. Find out more info click town c below for a copy of the powerpoint being presented or on the image for a copy of the poster to display.
