6 Country Reports on Youth Work - Jugendpolitik in Europa

focusing only on young people in voluntary organisations. The informant representing sports,
youth clubs and youth associations believes that there is a lack of research in these areas of
youth work and that there ought to be better routines for reporting relevant information. The
informant from the Norwegian Youth Council adds that it is challenging to do research on
voluntary organisations because the volunteers do not have the time to participate. Voluntary
youth workers are interested in participation in the activities of the organisations, not in filling
out forms or participating in interviews.
The informants from the Norwegian Association for Youth Clubs and the Norwegian Youth
Council see research as a means to achieve more visibility for their work, and believe that
more knowledge would make it easier for them to get through to policy-makers. The
informants from the Confederation of Sports and from Diakonhjemmet University College are
concerned with research as a means to do a better job. They have more specific wishes for
what kind of research needs to be done. This could be because they represent the areas of
youth work with the most available information.
11.9 Romania
In order to validate the data gathered at local level, seven interviews were conducted with
people involved in youth work. There was
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� one representative of the National Youth Authority, responsible for the coordination of
the Department on Projects;
� one representative of the National Agency for Supporting Young Peoples’ Initiative,
coordinating the Department of Research on Youth;
� two youth workers within the local County Youth Departments and
� two youth workers of the local youth organisation.
In terms of the way data on youth work and youth workers is collected: the main answers
were provided by the representatives of the national bodies. They mentioned that all youth
activities funded through public money are reported. They did not see any problem in the
way data was reported, especially the representative of the NYA, who mentioned that they
were the ones who had constructed this system of reporting by designing the National Plan
for Action for Youth and developed the methodology for funding youth activities. The NAY
representative was not very open about talking about “youth workers”, as if this did not
represent a topic of discussion or interest of this institution. Many of the current NAY
programs and policies focus on youth activities and on promoting these activities, but mainly
by cooperating with youth NGOs. Also, their present programme of developing a network of
youth centres in the whole country with qualified personnel serving in these centres was
mentioned as a form of promoting youth work at national level.