The Council of Europe Youth Work Portfolio was developed by the Council of Europe and its partners in the European Youth Sector. Founded in 1949, the Council of Europe is the continent’s leading human rights organisation. It includes 46 member states, 27 of which are also members of the European Union. The mission of the Council of Europe is to protect human rights, democracy and the rule of law. Its key instruments are the European Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, and the European Court of Human Rights. Find more about the Council of Europe at www.coe.int.

The Council of Europe and its partners want to encourage more young people to get involved actively in strengthening civil society in Europe and in defending the values of human rights, cultural diversity and social cohesion. They are also interested in promoting and developing sectoral policies that include youth perspectives and specific youth policies, putting special emphasis on the participation of young people.

The core mission of the Council of Europe in relation to young people is to enable them to be active citizens. The Council of Europe believes that national and international youth policies should create conditions and opportunities for learning and experiencing which creates knowledge, skills and access to rights for young people.

The Council of Europe has a Youth Department which is co-managed by youth organisations and governments with equal decision-making power working together. The Youth Department has a long-standing tradition in training and education activities for youth workers and youth leaders in Europe. Find out more about the Youth Department of the Council of Europe, the co-management system, the partners involved and its activities, at www.coe.int/youth.

The thematic priorities of the Youth Sector are described in its strategies. Youth work development, quality and recognition are priorities. Find out more at: Our Youth Strategy - Youth.

1. The Portfolio is an instrument for improving the recognition of youth work:

The youth work community of practice around Europe, through ongoing debates and exchanges, has expressed the need for an instrument that could help them to gain better recognition for their work. The Portfolio does this by helping members of that community of practice to:

• identify, assess and record their competencies
• describe their competencies to others
• set their own further learning and development goals.

The portfolio has been developed taking into account the long-standing practice of the Council of Europe in youth leader and worker training. Since the establishment of the European Youth Centre in Strasbourg in 1972, the Council of Europe’s youth sector has developed a wide range of training courses for people and organisations doing youth work, multipliers, non-formal educators, public servants and even researchers from across Europe, in themes ranging from human rights and anti-racism to conflict transformation and social inclusion, participation and democracy.
Find out more about the educational work and publications of the Youth Department of the Council of Europe at www.coe.int/youth. www.coe.int/youth.

2. The Portfolio is an instrument for promoting the Council of Europe’s approach to youth policy:

The Council of Europe sees the core task of national and international youth policies as creating the necessary conditions for young people to be active citizens. This task touches on so many aspects of young people’s lives that youth policy has to involve many different public policy sectors including, but not limited to, education, health, social affairs, family, justice, housing, and so on. It must therefore be implemented in a co-ordinated manner between different policy sectors. The Council of Europe promotes this ‘cross-sectoral’ way of working to address young people’s needs and concerns among its member states.

A cross-sectoral approach to youth policy means that it will be implemented using a variety of different means of intervention, ranging from legal measures to specific kinds of support programmes for young people. A key dimension for the Council of Europe is educational. Youth policy should support young people in acquiring the necessary competences to be active citizens (for example, autonomy, responsibility, initiative, engagement, solidarity, etc.). That is why youth work based on the principles of non-formal education and learning is one of the key working instruments of the Council of Europe’s youth policy.

The Portfolio is a tool which helps people and organisations doing youth work to consider how they contribute to helping young people acquire the competence to be active citizens. It asks them to consider how their knowledge, attitudes and skills can contribute to the fulfilment of this key task of youth policy.

3. The Portfolio is an instrument for promoting the values of the Council of Europe and the European Youth Sector

The Council of Europe believes that the ways in which individuals, organisations and institutions practise youth work, diverse as these are across Europe, reflect their vision of society and the values they wish to promote.

The Council of Europe’s mission is to promote a Europe which:

• respects human rights and human dignity
• promotes participatory democracy
• strives to achieve social cohesion, social justice, and gender equality
• considers living together in a pluralistic multicultural society as an enrichment and opportunity for social and economic progress, rather than as a problem
• encourages the development of civil society
• actively works to eradicate all forms of racism or discrimination based on social and ethnic origins, religion and sexual orientation
• contributes to making the world a better place to live, though active measures for global solidarity.

The Portfolio reflects these values in its understanding of what youth work is for, how it should be carried out, and which competences are necessary for doing it well. The very idea of a self- assessment tool, which provides individuals, teams and organisations with the opportunity to reflect on their own competence for youth work, and to develop their own plans for improving it, is grounded in a vision of youth work as a process of continuous learning and emancipation for those who practise it as much as for those who participate in it.

The process of updating and revising the Portfolio is undertaken in response to significant political and practice developments in the youth work field, and with the aim of sustaining the relevance of the Portfolio as a European standard for the development of youth work functions and youth worker competence. Furthermore, revisions are undertaken to improve the Portfolio as a European tool to be more concrete, practical and usable to youth workers and the wider community of youth work practice at all levels.

The current revision was undertaken in 2024/25 to support the operationalisation of Recommendation CM/Rec(2017)4 on youth work and support youth work development in Council of Europe member states and at institutional level, in accordance with the recommendations included in the report on “ Recommendation on youth work: Five years after adoption” Report on the review of the implementation of Recommendation CM/Rec(2017)4 as well as feedback on creative uses of the Portfolio documented in the Study on updating the Council of Europe Youth Work Portfolio, November 2023.

Acceptance for the positive role that youth work based on the principles of non-formal education
plays for the social integration, active citizenship, employability and the overall well-being and social
development of young people has grown significantly. This growing awareness has put youth work
and non-formal education high on the political agenda of many national governments and international institutions, including those of the Council of Europe and the European Commission.

This is not only the result of inter-governmental co-operation. Youth work organisations and providers
all over Europe and at the European level have successfully advocated for social and political recognition for the specificity of youth work in comparison to other forms of work with young people.
As a result, the European institutions have taken a more strategic approach to encouraging governments to value, recognise and support this kind of work through dedicated policies, programmes, research and resources.

The Council of Europe and the European Commission, as European institutions, have both committed to the recognition and quality development of youth work at European level and in their respective member states.

This commitment is formalised through different kinds of political document from Council of Europe and Committee of Ministers’ Recommendations to Council of the European Union Resolutions.

The most relevant for Portfolio users, and those who intend to use the Portfolio as a tool for advocacy regarding the recognition and development of quality youth work, are listed below (most recent first): 

• The 2023 Reykjavik Declaration “United around our values” adopted at the 4th Summit of Heads of State and Government of the Council of Europe, which outlines 10 Principles for Democracy and commits Council of Europe member states to supporting young people in participating in deliberations and decision-making processes. It validates the role of youth work for engaging young people in shaping the present and future of their societies, as well as in addressing challenges to democracy and human rights.
• The 2020 Resolution of the European Council on the Framework for establishing a European Youth Work Agenda (2020/C 415/01) acknowledges the importance of rethinking the education of young people and youth workers, and supporting them.
• The 2019 Council of the European Union Conclusions on Digital Youth Work reaffirms the fact that digital media is an important context in which youth work is practised and the need for a “… digital transformation of the youth work sector and youth work practice”, including through the development of critical digital literacy and agility.
• In the Council of the European Union Conclusions on Smart Youth Work, it was recognised that Smart youth work means making use of and addressing digital media and technologies for the purpose of positive outcomes for young people.
• The 2017 Council of Europe Recommendation of the Committee of Ministers to Member States on youth work Rec(2017)4 outlines four key aspects for the recognition of youth work: personal, social, political and formal.
• The 2012 Council of the European Union Recommendation on the validation of non- formal and informal learning of 20 December 2012 (2012/C 398/01) encourages the member states to offer individuals the opportunity to demonstrate what they have learned outside formal education and training – including through mobility experiences – and to make use of that learning for their careers and further learning.
• The 2003 Council of Europe Recommendation of the Committee of Ministers to Member States on the promotion and recognition of non-formal education/learning of young people (Rec(2003)8).

Furthermore, and starting in 2010, European Youth Work Conventions have been organised at regular intervals. A European Youth Work Convention is a large-scale gathering of what has come to be known as the European youth work community of practice, including policy, research and practice stakeholders from across the continent, to discuss their visions, and the issues and challenges of youth work in the present and future from the perspective of policy. They aim to chart ways forward for youth work development across Europe, at both the national and European levels. The first two, organised in Ghent and in Brussels in Belgium, sought to understand what the common core of youth work is across Europe, and how this is distinct from other forms of work with young people, while recognising the diversity of youth work in form, approach and experience across the continent (Declaration of the 1^st European Youth Work Convention and Documentation from the 2^nd European Youth Work Convention). The 3^rd and 4^th editions, organised in Bonn, Germany and in Malta respectively, sought to create an agenda for anchoring European and national level efforts to develop recognition, quality, innovation and cross-sectoral co-operation in a common vision of excellence in youth work. The European Youth Work Agenda is based on the Final Declaration of the 3rd European Youth Work Convention “Signposts for the future”. It focuses on the promotion and recognition of youth work and its connection to local contexts, communicates the value of youth work beyond the youth work community of practice and places importance on the capacity of youth work as a field or as a sector to navigating European and worldwide transformations. The 2025 EYWC in Malta sought to institutionalise the implementation of a comprehensive European Youth Work Agenda as a common responsibility of the Council of Europe and the European Commission, with the active participation of member states of both, and the infrastructure of their programmes.

While each institution has its own specific policies and programmes on youth work development and recognition, they recognise the extent to which their efforts can be complementary. They established a Partnership on Youth to foster the development of common priorities in the field of Youth, one of which is recognition and quality development of youth work. Notably, it contributes to this agenda by producing knowledge on youth work and translating it for effective use in youth policy and practice.

Some of the Partnership’s most important initiatives on recognition and youth work development have included:  

The production of key knowledge books

• Youth worker education in Europe: Policies, structures, practices
• Seven volumes on The History of Youth Work in Europe
• Visible Value: Growing youth work in Europe
• Pathways to Recognition

There is no specific recognition, validation or certification process associated with the Portfolio at this point. Furthermore, there is no “one-stop shop” which explains the recognition, validation and certification options available to people doing youth work across Europe. These two facts can make acquiring recognition for their achievements, and for the value of their work, seem complicated to people doing youth work. However, significant progress has been made with the validation of non-formal learning across Europe, although not necessarily connected to the youth field. Co-operation between youth and education fields in this area would be needed, particularly as qualification and occupation frameworks for youth workers are being developed at national levels.  

As a tool for the self-assessment of competences, the Portfolio is one of the many ‘informal’ recognition methods available to people doing youth work. By combining self-assessments with evidence of experience, testimonies from participants in your activities, reference people and certificates from further learning and training undertaken, the Portfolio provides its holder with a history of their competence. Like a photographer or graphic designer who creates a Portfolio of their artistic creations, people doing youth work can use the Portfolio to show what they have done and why they and eventually others think they are competent in doing it.

Nevertheless, across Europe there are a variety of ‘formal’ recognition, validation and certification possibilities available. These are more often than not organised nationally, but European options also exist. Working in your context, you will best be able to judge what kind of recognition is useful or necessary for your situation and development. Here we provide some clues for finding your pathway to recognition using the Portfolio.

Formal validation and certification pathways are typically organised in-country, and offered by state-recognised national, regional or local authorities and institutions of different kinds. These are very diverse. Each country has different forms and procedures, and some countries even have several different pathways to accessing recognition. For example, some countries have university level bachelor’s degree study programmes and others have vocational training programmes. Others allow people to gain qualifications for youth work through on-the-job practice. Some countries have no specific professional or academic qualification system for youth work at all. Furthermore, some countries have several routes that one can take or combine these, according to one’s interest, learning style and possibilities. In many countries, local and regional authorities and other state-recognised institutions offer vocational training and further professional education opportunities through shorter- and longer-term course formats with different types of certifications.

Finding out about the different pathways available in your country demands research and time.

Here are some useful starting points for finding out more:

• The higher education, vocational training or adult education authorities in your country, region or city can provide information about networks of providers and other relevant opportunities. For participating countries, the EURYDICE Network provides information on which authorities from local to national levels are responsible for which kind of education, training and recognition, and so on.
   
• In countries participating in the Erasmus+ programme of the European Commission, the National Agencies responsible for the implementation of the programme can provide information on specific national initiatives in the fields of youth, vocational training, adult education and recognition.
   
• The Eurodesk portal is useful for finding out more about initiatives relevant to youth. Eurodesk is the main provider of information on European policies and opportunities for young people and those who work with them.
• Youthpass is part of the European Commission’s strategy to foster the recognition of non-formal learning. It is a recognition tool for non-formal and informal learning in youth projects that take place within the framework of EU Youth Programmes, specifically Erasmus+ youth participation activities and youth exchanges, and the European Solidarity Corps.
   
• Youth work associations and providers in your country may be a good starting point for finding out more about recognition pathways, resources and guidelines. The Alliance of Youth Workers Associations (AYWA) was founded in 2024 as an umbrella organisation gathering national youth worker associations. AYWA offers support and guidance to youth workers interested in creating youth worker associations in contexts where there are none.