Announcing a wonderful speaker line-up for our IDYW seminar on Black Lives Matter and Youth Work:

 

• Steph Green teaches community development and youth work at Ruskin College. She wrote a recent BLM piece on the IDYW website and will be talking about what white privilege is and how white people can be effective allies to BLM.
• Homayra Bibi is an experienced and qualified youth and community worker currently working in a community-based project with mainly white young people. She will be making links with the rise of Islamophobia internationally since 9/11 and discussing its impact on how she is treated as a worker.
• Lucy Njuguna is an experienced and qualified youth and community worker, currently working with young carers. She will compare working in a Black-led agency and a white-led one, and raise issues about the ways in which Black youth workers and young people can be marginalised.

[Edited – one speaker sadly had to pull out]

 

This free online seminar, Black Lives Matter and Youth Work is unfortunately fully booked. The seminar is on Friday 3rd July, 3:30pm-4:30pm and you can join the waiting list here:

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/black-lives-matter-and-youth-work-online-seminar-tickets-110098964968

We envisage this online seminar as a participatory discussion on Black Lives Matter as it relates to youth work as envisaged in our cornerstones of open democratic youth work practice.

This seminar will begin with introductions and a small number of short inputs to inform and inspire discussion (see speakers above).

There will then be space to discuss the issues in small breakout groups and collectively.

You are very welcome whether you are a youth worker / youth work participant who is also an organiser or activist; whether you are reflecting on how to respond in your youth work practice; or whether you simply want to get together with others and use this space to educate ourselves on this issue.

Background reading:

You are invited to read the recent reflection on this website by IDYW steering group member Steph Green: https://indefenceofyouthwork.com/2020/06/10/black-lives-matter-how-can-youth-and-community-work-respond-to-a-community-led-movement/

You may also be interested in this USA youth work perspective from 2016 by Stell Simonton of Youth Today: ‘To some youth organizations, Black Lives Matter is a natural extension of their work’. https://youthtoday.org/2016/09/blacklivesmatter-to-some-youth-organizations-black-lives-matter-is-a-natural-extension-of-their-work/