Girls in Control

On Wednesday morning we headed to the Anansi Community Centre in South East Amsterdam. Here, many of the Dutch youth workers gave presentations about their projects. One was about ‘Girls in Control’ a club that helps 14-18 year-old teenage young women with issues such as body image and self-confidence. What was particularly striking about this project was the parental involvement. The youth workers visited each girls parent and asked them what they were proud of about their daughters and filmed their responses. Then on the ‘Girls in Control’ retreat, the girls were shown these touching videos, needless to say there were lots of tears! This was a great way to get parents engaged and shift focus from the negative elements parents can get stuck on as their child goes through adolescence. A turn to considering what they admire in their child seemed to be a pleasant reminder to both parties.

We were also given presentations on homework clubs, outdoor fitness training camps and a presentation from the researcher observing our work. After lunch, the UK team were taken to a separate room where Michael asked us what we thought the research was about. We stated that it was about African diaspora youth work practices. He asked us to remember this as we went into the following interview session…

The UK team were split up amongst the Dutch youth workers to facilitate interviews with them. The first group I helped interview was comprised of all Black Dutch youth workers. When we asked them whether they worked with African diaspora youth differently, they recognised that they may know how to engage with African diaspora youth in a more specialised way. There may be certain things the young people did not need to explain because their Black youth workers already had a cultural understanding. In practice, this meant that if they needed to visit a Black child’s parents for instance, they had an implicit understanding of how to best approach the situation. We soon realised that the African diaspora youth workers did alter their practice when engaging with youth of the same background but hadn’t recognised it as an altered practice because they did it naturally.

An interesting thing happened next; we switched groups and got very different answers. The second group of was a mix of Black and white Dutch youth workers. When asked similar questions in regards to how they engage with youth of the African diaspora, the white youth workers said they didn’t change their practice. Or emphasised that all the youth they worked with were human beings and as such they didn’t treat them differently based on their background. I asked if they thought it might make a difference that as white youth workers talking to young Black girls about body image their might be particularities to those young women’s experiences they might not have as much knowledge of. Here they did acknowledge a difference and suggested that situations like that were when they brought people in who had specialised knowledge e.g. Black hair care. Overall, it felt like a tense discussion. I think the white youth workers were a little affronted that we were pushing them on the identity issue.

It seemed like the UK and the Dutch team were literally on different sides.

After a really tasty Surinamese dinner of Soto soup – my new favourite food - we relaxed and I stayed behind at the Bonte Kraai community centre speaking to the Dutch team. We ended up having a very honest discussion about what had occurred that day. We realised that our groups had been told very different things about the research. The Dutch team had been told it was a study about youth work in the UK and the Netherlands. Our group had been told it was a project about African diaspora youth work in the UK and the Netherlands… After a fun and insightful evening of discussion - armed with my insider info - back at the hotel I let the rest of the UK team know what had been going on from the Dutch team’s side. After a long chat we went to bed ready to have a more overt and open discussion about the issues with all parties present the following day.

We’ve arrived!

We arrived in Amsterdam late afternoon on Monday and after dropping our bags at the hotel we headed out for our evening meal at Bonte Kraai, a community centre in South Eastern Amsterdam. It is where some of the youth workers we will be working with are based and they have a chef on site who made some Indonesian food for us. It was nice to see the community centre – that appeared to be newly decorated and get to meet all of the youth workers. We had to do some cringe worthy ice-breaker / ‘get to know each other’ games, which were pretty fun and got us all talking. It was pretty apparent that everyone in the room was super passionate about the work they do and excited to share their best practices with each other.

Day 2 started with a Black Heritage Tour of Amsterdam. I was really looking forward to it as I’m interested in Afropean identities and think it’s important to hear about Black experiences in Europe. It was fascinating to see the elements of Black history that can be observed if you’re shown where to look… However, a discussion was generated in the group about the focus of Black history always being on slavery and that this gives the impression that Black identities are always tied up in oppression and struggle. I agree, it can be depressing to hear these stories but that’s why I think it is important to balance this by also looking at history pre-slavery and pre-colonialism in Africa. In terms of how might we talk about slavery with young people, perhaps it is down to how the information is relayed. If enslaved people are represented as passive victims rather than active survivor’s maybe it becomes a less off putting experience.

The afternoon comprised of a lecture at the University of Amsterdam on the youth work courses they offer. It was interesting to hear about the different approach Sebastian explores in his research. His focus is on emotional energy and how fatalist perspectives can be transformed to help young people move out of their circumstances. I really liked this more holistic approach but in a UK context I worry that some might feel it too ‘hippy-ish’ despite it’s great impact.

Tomorrow we’re off to visit some of the projects Swazoom work on. I’m excited to see the youth workers in action.

Violence

Today was our third Amsterdam prep meeting. We arrived in a sombre mood as we discussed the murder of the 17-year old Black boy Myron Yarde who was killed in London at the weekend. The story was all over the papers so was on everyone’s mind. Michael decided to tweak the theme of the day’s meeting to address the event in our work. We were asked to come up with 5 best pest practices for youth workers dealing with knife crime, gang violence or police brutality. This is what our group came up with:

• When violent events happen - especially if they relate to young people - it is important for them to be given the time, space and opportunity to air their thoughts and feelings on the issues. How do they feel? Are they scared, sad, angry, confused? Knowing that there is a safe space to discuss these issues is important. Odiri noted that if a young person reveals something particularly worrying, it is important for them to be taken for a one to one immediately so that it can be dealt with promptly. Most importantly, it was made apparent that young people needed to be given the space to articulate their feelings on violence and for them to feel heard, listened to and taken seriously.

• Meaningful education or training should be provided on how to deal with interactions with the police. Stop and search procedures are unfortunately a frequent reality for many young Black people. Kristina in our group let us know that the centre she worked in provides small cards (that fit in an Oyster card holder) to their young people. On one side it provides simple and clear guidelines on what police are and are not allowed to do in a stop and search procedure. On the other side there was a phrase (that they could memorise) to say to the police during the interaction. What we liked about this example was that it was very practical – it told them their rights and exactly what they could do – giving them some form of agency within the situation.

• Macey gave an example of real engagement with the police on a project she worked on. At her organisation the youth workers approached the local police, they invited them to their centre on the condition that they not wear their uniforms and were prepared to get involved in a role play. The police officers and young people did a drama workshop where the young people played the police and vice versa. This interaction forced the police to consider what being stopped and search might feel like from a young person’s perspective. For the young people, they got an insight into the role police felt they had to play. This type of interaction had a positive impact on both parties.

• Another best practice was to have one’s ear to the ground in terms of what may be happening outside of the youth centre. What issues might there be amongst the young people, could something culminate in violence, what areas are the kids from, who might potentially have an issues with who? It became clear that youth workers from the same areas or similar backgrounds to the children they worked with were more au fait with this and tended to do it naturally. I posed the question that rather than just a best practice could this be down to the background of the youth workers themselves. To be a good youth worker do you need to have the same background as those you work with? Can you be taught the cultural knowledge of that group, can you learn to pick up on implicit subtleties and red flags?

• Finally, it was suggested that to be an effective youth worker, you needed to not treat it as a 9:00 - 5:00 job. That if the young people needed you outside of your scheduled shift, you needed to be available and prepared to show up and follow through. I thought this was a noble and important role to play in young people’s lives - especially as youth workers generally work with marginalised and under served groups who may not have individuals in their lives who go the extra mile. However, in my eyes it showed that a lot of work that youth workers do goes unseen as it is done in their own and on their own dime... In my eyes, youth workers play a very important role in our society but do not seem to be treated so or compensated accordingly. As such, whilst doing things outside of the work day may be a norm for many, I felt it was important that their extra work - and the extra value it offers - be compensated so it could be done my more youth workers but also to limit burn out. If the real hours a youth worker did were logged, would that identify the reality that they are working more than they legally should and more funding and more staff need to be provided to make it fairer and safer for all?

Terminology...

Our second meeting regarding the Best of Both World’s exchange to Amsterdam, centred on the term African Diaspora and what it meant to us in our work. This stimulated a lot of debate as the ‘terminology’ conversation often does…

Admittedly, I enter this space slightly exasperated at the amount of times this conversation seems to be had at events I attend and yet no resolution is found. It feels like a loop or a glitch in our system as such. A divisive conversation cycle that Black people often get stuck in, which prevents us from getting to the actual work.

What we as people of colour should call ourselves is always hotly debated. Should we say Black, African, Caribbean, Afro-Caribbean, Black-British, mixed, dual heritage, interracial… need I continue! Whilst I recognise that naming oneself is a powerful self-defining tool I do feel that the conversation often gets stuck there. For me, the term Black is nice and simple, I like the powerful history and political meaning of the word but others do not feel comfortable with it or don’t see it as a reflection of themselves, they prefer other terms. This is fair enough, we all have to respect each other’s forms of self-identification, however I think that once the conversation has been had or we recognise / agree that for that purpose, at that time, we are going to strategically essentialise under said term. This does not negate that we are all complex, multi-faceted individuals who occupy different elements of identities at different times but once we have reached some form of agreement…. let’s move on. The conversation can be revisited if appropriate but conversation for conversation sake over terminology is one of my bug bears. It will be interesting to see what comes out in the data regarding the term African diaspora…

Questions raised

At Monday’s meeting we were asked to reflect on the idea of diasporic youth work and if or how it supports diaspora young people develop positive identities. This raised lots of questions for us.

In our group we questioned the use of the term ‘diaspora’. We suggested that it may be helpful to be clearer or more specific, after all we are referring to African diaspora youth i.e. Black young people. We considered the politics of being unapologetic about our target group and that when African diasporic groups focus on their communities they tend to be negatively perceived by others.

Secondly, we wondered what the best practices would be and who would determine if or how something qualified? I wondered if the best practices in Amsterdam and London would have commonalities? How different might they be? Would there be clashes due to our different European or African / Caribbean contexts?

Next our conversation moved to the idea of ‘diasporic youth work’. We wondered whether the youth worker needed to be African diasporic themselves in order for it to count as diasporic youth work. Or was the definition purely dependent on the cultural background of the young people engaged with. Accordingly, we wondered whether a youth worker (who was not of the African diaspora) be effective at helping African diasporic young people develop positive identities. Could a white youth worker help a young Black person develop a positive sense of self? If they used an African diasporic youth work approach/methodology would it have the same impact as Black youth worker?

My perspective is that the identity of the youth worker does make an impact and does have an effect. It is not a neutral or benign aspect of interactions and considerations need to be taken on board before a youth worker can engage most effectively. The youth worker’s own identity, preconceptions and privilege need to be recognised by them in order for them to move forward effectively and most importantly for there to be positive outcomes for the African diasporic youth engaged with.