Why I Keep Coming Back to Working with Young People

From accidental to intentional youth worker

No matter where my work takes me, I keep finding my way back to young people.

Over the years I’ve worked across youth and community development, facilitation, consulting, training and wellbeing. I’ve sat in strategy meetings, advised organisations, facilitated community engagement and worked with councils and services.

But underneath all those roles, I’m still a youth worker and community builder at heart, sometimes disguised as a consultant.

And I think there are three reasons I keep coming back.

It started accidentally

Years ago, in Guararema, Brazil, I opened an English school. That was the plan, anyway.

Young people started hanging around. Some couldn’t afford private classes, so we created free music activities. We got to know them and started asking what they were interested in.

What struck me was that, even when some were facing difficult circumstances themselves, they didn’t just talk about what they needed. They wanted to help other people.

So we formed a collective. Young people took music, poetry, comedy and creativity into the community, including neighbourhoods experiencing disadvantage, children’s homes and places where older people gathered.

They were creating the activities and contributing to their community. Without planning it, our little English school had started becoming a community hub, and I had become an accidental youth worker. The relationships came before the title.

Years later in Australia, I found myself doing it again, this time more intentionally. I developed my practice in youth work, community development and participatory facilitation. In 2019, after being nominated by Kate Munro, I was named NSW Youth Worker of the Year.

But the recognition isn’t what has kept me in the work. The young people have.

Young people keep surprising me

I’ve now worked with young people in inner-city and suburban Sydney, including Waverley and Woollahra, and in regional communities, through youth summits, leadership programs, consultations and place-based community projects. And they still surprise me.

Ask young people what isn’t working and they’ll tell you: transport, racism, isolation, mental health, boredom, not having anywhere to go, adults making decisions without them, and being consulted repeatedly without seeing anything happen.

But keep the conversation going and something else emerges. Ideas.

A basketball competition. A creative project. Somewhere safe to hang out. A shared meal. Music. Mentoring. Career opportunities. A place to study. A youth-led event. A safe third space outside home and school.

This is one of the things I love about youth work. We can start with problems and discover possibility.

I’ve seen a quiet young person sitting at the edge of a group suddenly offer an idea that changes the conversation. I’ve seen young people challenge assumptions adults didn’t even realise we were making.

And I’ve seen what happens when we recognise young people’s strengths, relationships, creativity and capacity to contribute.

From youth voice to youth contribution

This has increasingly shaped the way I work. In Deniliquin, for example, we’ve been exploring issues including isolation, transport, stereotypes, racism and limited opportunities.

Alongside asking “What do young people need?”, we ask “What do young people care about enough to help create?”

That leads towards youth leadership, intergenerational relationships and young people contributing alongside other community members. It’s also why Asset-Based Community Development has become such an important part of my practice.

Youth participation should extend beyond inviting young people into a workshop, collecting their ideas on Post-it notes and producing a report. Listening matters. So does what happens next.

Can we connect a young person’s idea with someone who can help? Can we give them a little responsibility? Can we open a door? Can we provide resources without taking over?

Can we create the conditions for young people to discover their own capacity to contribute?

Perhaps the shift is from youth voice to youth contribution.

And maybe it is personal too

There is another reason this work matters to me. I was a shy young person. I was underestimated, and I probably underestimated myself too.

Friendship helped me. Street basketball helped. Community and education helped. Later, mentors helped.

There wasn’t one program that transformed my life. There were people, places and opportunities that gradually helped me discover who I was and what I could contribute.

Maybe that’s why I still notice the young person at the edge of the room. The quiet one. The one we’ve already made assumptions about. The one whose strengths aren’t visible yet.

I know what a difference it can make when somebody gets curious about what you have to offer.

Perhaps that’s the heart of it

Those of us who have worked in youth and community development for a long time can end up a fair distance from where we started. There are strategies to write, budgets to manage, outcomes to measure, funding agreements to meet and organisations to run.

All of that matters. But every now and then, I think we need to remember what brought us here in the first place.

For me, it keeps coming back to relationships. To possibility. To that young person at the edge of the room.

And to a simple belief that has followed me from a little English school in Brazil to the work I do today:

Young people are people worth creating with now.

I started as an accidental youth worker. These days, I’m a much more intentional one.

And I hope I never become so much of a consultant that I forget that.