Report - Salto

Bridges for Recognition | Conclusions and closing remarks
77
Jonathan Bowyer, the General Rapporteur aimed to bring
together some of the key learning from the conference.
His comments, notes from his PowerPoint slides and post
conference reflections are combined here.
remarks
Where we have been
120 people from many different countries, organisations
and backgrounds have worked together for three days on
the subject of recognition of non-formal education and
youth work in Europe. We have heard about the political
and policy context in which we are working and we
have reviewed some significant milestones in the journey
so far. We are not starting from nothing; we are working
in a positive context. There is a lot of good will amongst
practitioners and there is a lot of political will amongst
policy makers.
We have seen and discussed sixteen examples of good practice in relation to recognition and we
have had two opportunities to discuss the future – once in stakeholder groups and once according
to the hot topic that interested us most. We have discussed recognition for three groups of people
– young people, youth workers and youth trainers at the European level. We have seen, if not
experienced, that good practice exists at local, national and European levels.
We have recognised that there is a lot of innovation throughout Europe in relation to this subject
and we have not been afraid to ask some perhaps awkward questions about where it is going.
Is non formal education under threat from recognition? Will the fun be taken out of it and will
the voluntary nature of participation be eroded? We were challenged to make some concrete
proposals about the way forward.
We have studied the different needs of the various stakeholders in recognition – young people
themselves, employers, institutions and youth workers.