The online European Youth Work Portfolio can be useful for you as an individual youth worker or youth leader to:

• self- assess the current level of youth work competence
• set up learning and development aims and pursue those in ways you will identify
• after a certain time, revisit your self-assessment to see what has changed, update your Portfolio or restart the process

Making a Portfolio is a dynamic process and we invite you, if you use the tool, to revisit it regularly. It can be a good friend in supporting you to keep your motivation to learn more and develop your youth work competence. You can easily check whether the self-assessment made at one point in time is still valid, and then update the parts for which changes or developments have taken place.

If you are working in a formal institution or structure, you might have to take part in a performance review or appraisal. It can be relevant to conduct your Portfolio review shortly before such an appraisal takes place, because it can provide you with information and arguments to include in the discussion of your performance with your supervisor.

Otherwise, you can decide for yourself when it makes most sense to do it – for example, in conjunction with a regular team evaluation, or a discussion with your volunteer or professional supervisor, at the beginning and/or end of an internship, or when you need to revise your CV for a job application.

There are two ways to do a team competence assessment using the Portfolio. The first takes place in 2 steps, with each team member conducting their own self-assessment, and then collectively discussing aspects of team competence using the competence framework as a guide.

All the team members can also conduct the Portfolio assessment exercise together, with their teamwork being the subject of the assessment, rather than individual competence. In most cases, this only requires that you replace ‘I’ with ‘We’ when conducting the assessment. So for example, when thinking about intercultural competence, the team exercise would be to assess how the team collectively understands its own intercultural reality (i.e. team composition and composition of the groups of youth it is working with) and how it deals with it (i.e. with each other and collectively with the participants).

The Portfolio can be used as a learning and development tool for an entire organisation! Like teams, organisations can learn collectively and reach higher potential, and Portfolio provides a tool for people in positions of responsibility in organisations to reflect on the way the organisation is functioning and developing.

You can use the Portfolio as a basis for the development of a ‘quality assurance framework’. A quality assurance framework is a set of principles and guidelines that an organisation uses to make sure it is doing its work adequately, in line with its stated mission and objectives and with the needs of its beneficiaries. The development of an organisational competence assessment and learning plan can form the foundations of such a framework, and for contributing to an organisational development strategy.

The Portfolio can be used as a learning and development tool for an entire organisation! Like teams, organisations can learn collectively and reach higher potential, and Portfolio provides a tool for people in positions of responsibility in organisations to reflect on the way the organisation is functioning and developing.

As a youth work manager, you can use the Portfolio as a basis for the development of a ‘quality assurance framework’. A quality assurance framework is a set of principles and guidelines that an organisation uses to make sure it is doing its work adequately, in line with its stated mission and objectives and with the needs of its beneficiaries. The development of an organisational competence assessment and learning plan can form the foundations of such a framework, and for contributing to an organisational development strategy.

You can also integrate the functions and competences of youth workers from the Portfolio into the process of appraisal and objective setting for the youth workers or youth leaders that you are coordinating.

Furthermore, you can use the Portfolio framework as a tool for identifying the learning needs of the youth workers and youth leaders you are managing in your organisation of institution.

The Council of Europe Youth Work Portfolio can be a very useful tool for trainings of youth workers and youth leaders.

In a training course, the trainers can use the Portfolio as a reference when they develop their training course curriculum.

The Portfolio can also be used as a self-assessment tool for participants in training courses related to youth work development. For example, participants can use the Portfolio at the beginning of a training course to assess where they are now with their youth work competence, and also use it to set up learning goals that they want to achieve during the training course. The trainers can use these learning goals of their participants in order to shape and fine tune the curriculum of their training course.

The Portfolio has been used in the majority of the training courses of the Youth Department of the Council of Europe on youth work topics. It has been used for setting the course curriculum and for develop an individual portfolio of each participant. As such, it has also served as a basis for the certification of the training courses.

Trainers can also use the Portfolio as a support tool during processes associated with training, such as mentoring or coaching.

The Portfolio initiative is a specific example of the commitment of the Council of Europe’s member states to promote the recognition of youth work based on the principles of non-formal education. This commitment was formalised through the Council of Europe’s Recommendation Rec(2003)8 of the Committee of Ministers to member states on the promotion and recognition of non-formal education/learning of young people and subsequent follow-up texts. In providing a tool for individuals, teams and organisations to assess their competence, the Portfolio contributes to increasing transparency around the quality of youth work.

Policy makers on any level, from local to European, can use the Portfolio in order to set up standards or tools for recognition of youth work.

For example, the Portfolio can become the basis for the development of a profile of youth worker that can support the recognition of youth worker as a profession.

The Portfolio can be used by policy makers in defining the curriculum for the training of youth workers. The Portfolio can also be useful in certifying the training or the learning outcomes that youth workers had as a result of youth work training.

In the realities where youth workers already need to undergo a specific training to be recognised as youth workers, the Portfolio could be a complementary tool of self-assessment and development.

Policy makers can support youth organisations in making use of the Portfolio as a tool for quality improvement of youth work programmes and actions.

You can also translate the Portfolio in your language: find out how!
The availability of the Council of Europe Youth Work Portfolio in a wide variety of the languages spoken by users and beneficiaries plays a central role in disseminating its approaches to youth work.
The availability of the tool in the everyday language of youth workers and youth leaders is crucial to making the Portfolio usable and truly relevant.

Guidelines for translation

Form for expression of interest to translate the Portfolio