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Pathways to Creative Youthwork
Pathways to Creative Youthwork
Content
Habits are a big part of your life, about 40 % of your actions are habits. What if you would become aware of your habits and make conscious decisions instead of doing things automatically without thinking if it is an effective behaviour or not. A habit can be something small like taking a coffee every morning when you wake up, but it can also be more complicated as not taking action to change something that you don’t feel comfortable with. These habits are not just there, they grow step by step until they become second nature. This can be very helpful because when something becomes a second nature, the action doesn’t take a lot of energy anymore. Though it is very annoying when the habit is not effective for your well being.
Do you want to have influence at what happens in your own life and in your surroundings? By living the 7 habits of highly effective people, a method developed by Steven Covey, you will become better in achieving the things that you appreciate most in life and you will become more effective in living the personal and career life that you want. This playlist is inspired by Steven Covey’s work. It will support you in creating habits that are useful for you personally and especially for your work with young people.
Watch and be inspired by Youtube artist NickyTutorials when she decides to take back influence at her life during blackmail by sharing to the world that she is transgender. She became aware about her habits, was proactive within the area where she could influence to feel free again.
Activities to complete
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Content
Being proactive means taking responsibility for our actions, attitudes, and impact on others — instead of reacting to external circumstances. It is the first and most fundamental habit of personal leadership, as it empowers us to choose our responses rather than being driven by emotions, conditions, or the behavior of others.
In youth work, being proactive is about helping young people recognize that they are not passive recipients of life’s events, but active agents of change. It’s about understanding that while we can’t always control what happens to us, we can always choose how we respond.
The Circle of Influence activity had made this visible. You mapped out the people who affected your lives—family, friends, work, and learning. By identifying positive and negative influences, you reflected on who supported your growth and creativity.
This shift from reactive to proactive thinking nurtures self-awareness, responsibility, and empowerment. It supports the development of resilience and initiative — qualities that are essential for personal growth, social participation, and creative leadership in youth work. Proactive people recognise that they are “response-able”. They focus on solutions instead of the problem.
How to grow your proactivity attitude and skills?
- Anticipate and take action: When in the area where you live you are upset about the trash at the street, take action and daily get 3 items of trash from the street to throw them away properly. Perhaps you can even start a community via social media in your area that is doing the same?
- Embrace your responsibility and influence: Everybody has influence on something and someone, on a big or a small scale. Be bold and use it.
- Participate actively: When taking part in something, do it with the best you have in you.
- Hold yourself accountable: When something goes wrong, even when it was not your responsibility, think about where you could have contributed to let it be a success.
- Surround yourself with the right people: Everybody needs a group of people around them with different personalities and skills to get feedback, smart solutions, strength when you need it, knowledge about that which you don’t know yourself. And be a role model and critical friend yourself for the ones around you.
- Focus on solutions: When you focus on something, you will go towards that direction. When you want to meet the chief of education from your region, then think about ways to get that meeting done. And if you brainstorm with the right people about the how, it’s sure that you will find several solutions.
- Put yourself in other men's shoes to see their perspectives: When organising an activity, step in the shoes of the people who join. What would they need to know, what will they expect, what do they need, what is their background, etc.? What do you learn from this to organise your activity?
- When you go through a failure, check out what you can learn from it: Failure is not the same as failing. People who have achieved a lot, have made many mistakes and learned from them. It gave them knowledge, experience and skills. So when you feel miserable about something where you made a mistake, think about what you have learned from it.
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The person who owns this badge…
...developed an understanding of what it means to be proactive rather than reactive
...learned to identify their Circle of Influence and focus energy on what they can change.
...applied proactive thinking to youth work practice by creating environments that encourage young people to take ownership, make choices, and act with purpose.
The holder of this badge has worked independently on the implement of "Habit 1: Be proactive" in the context of youth work. In collaboration with a group of international youthwork colleagues, the holder has worked at the sociocultural context of this competence during the international training course "Pathways to creative youthwork".
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Tasks
Task no.1
Evidence verified by: one activity organiser
Reflect on today’s learnings:
- What did you discover about your own ability to take initiative or influence outcomes?
- How did the Circle of Influence activity help you understand where you can focus your energy for positive change?
- What connections can you see between being proactive and fostering creativity, resilience, and responsibility in yourself and others?
Task no.2
Evidence verified by: one activity organiser
How can you use your learnings in your work with young people?
- How can you help young people recognise the difference between being reactive and being proactive?
- What activities or methods could you use to support them in identifying their own Circle of Influence?
- How can you create opportunities for young people to experience the impact of taking initiative and responsibility for their choices?
Skills
LIFECOMP
#Self-regulation
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#Flexibility
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#Empathy
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#Growth mindset
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#Managing learning
Activities: 4
Started: 1
Completed playlist: 0
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