In my bachelor’s thesis, I write about the implementation of youth work in the municipality of Logatec through a project called brLOG – The Logatec Youth Program. In the introduction I define the term youth, I write about the free time and the challenges and needs of young people. I describe youth work, highlighting youth centers, youth street work, and I also touch on the financing of youth work. In the continuation of the introduction, I focus on the environment within which I conducted the research. I describe the youth in the Logatec municipality, local community actors and the initiative group, and present the Logatec Youth Program and outline the process of its creation. With the help of qualitative research, I conducted interviews with eleven interlocutors and gained insight into their experience of the Logatec Youth Program and their understanding of youth issues in the municipality. In the empirical part, I present the findings I came to by interviewing the selected population. I found that the Logatec Youth Program is partially recognized in the local community, and the fact that cooperation with the local community is not concretely established probably contributes to this. Its main roles are providing space for young people, providing psychosocial support and assistance to young people, addressing their needs and challenges, and including excluded young people, among others. The needs and challenges of young people recognized by the local community are mainly the need for peer contact, space, boundaries and barriers, the challenges of digitization, consumption of prohibited substances, difficulties in establishing contacts and mental distress. The Logatec Youth Program does not fully address them with its activities. The greatest need for youth work is among young people transitioning to puberty and those who live on the outskirts of the municipality, the introduction of youth street work could contribute to this. There are many possibilities for improvement, above all is the Logatec Youth Program moving to new premises. Regarding the financing of the Logatec Youth Program, I found that it is mainly financed from municipal funds, partly also from European funds. All these findings are intertwined. If the participation of the Logatec Youth Program improves, then its visibility improves, followed by all the topics I addressed in the research improving. I can conclude that the Logatec Youth Program is successfully embarking on the path of implementing youth work in the municipality of Logatec and has a lot of potential for long-term success if it pursues its purpose. With the results of my research, I want to encourage the good practice of youth work and contribute to its positive presence in the municipality of Logatec.
|