The second day of the 3rd German Greek Youth Forum was full of open spaces in order to give the participants the opportunity to talk about their projects, organizations, vision and their plans for the future. Through all these conversations the question “How do you define „Youth Worker“ came up – and everybody has a different answer.

“A characteristic definition of a youth worker is: someone who wants to help young people. This is my professio. In Wiesbaden we run projects in order to help young people to find their own way, to define themselves and to choose their own path in life. If they make a choice and they have trouble, they can come back to us because our role is to support them” in their process.
Semir Gassaloglu- Stadtteilzentrum Gräselberg- Landeshauptstadt Wiesbaden-Amt fur Soziale Arbeit

“There is no certification for that, it’s an informal procedure but at the same time it’s a big responsibility to handle young people. To For me it is someone who guides young people to find their routes. Because I’m involved in theatre, I teach theatre, I can tell about the procedure of theatre: When you teach theatre, you open the roads for young people to explore. It’s not like teaching mathematics. A young worker gives the tools and shows the path to youngsters in order to find their way. So, there’s no professionalism into that, you don’t pass knowledge. So as youth workers we need to leave young people free to follow their paths and build their own roads.
Dionisis Zafiridis- Anazitites Theatrou – Fix In Art

“A youth worker is a person who supports young people and encourages them in order to take the initiatives. Furthermore, he/she shows them the different kind of paths that they can follow but at the same time he/she gives to the youth the freedom to choose the path that they wanna follow”.
Evangelos Spinthakis- Vereiningung fur Umweltbildung Korinth

Text and pictures: Katerina Beli; Evgenia Chatziadamidou