Diploma in Youth Work A Wealth of Experience

CYP YOUTH IN DEVELOPMENT WORK, A WEALTH OF EXPERIENCE!

[By r. M. Kebbeh, the best performing student in the Gambia]

The commonwealth Diploma in Youth in Development Work - is an 18-month distant education course covering various development specific needs of people working with young people and in development in general. 

The course which began with the selection of interested candidates started in 2003/4 and took 18 months to complete, it covers various activities ranging from completion of the learning contract for each module, face to face tutorials, assignments and time testes. This very rewarding course opens our horizon and provokes my curiosity in experimenting practical field work. 

Very interesting modules that attract my attention most are principles and practices of youth work, working with young people in their communities and youth health just to mention but a few, this is because it involves my day to day work, after each day's reading and face to face tutorial sessions, applying these in the field gives me the practical dimension and energises my interest to gather more. 

I must confess that, the course being provided at home through distance learning accords me and many like me to be able to attend and enjoy converting the knowledge gained into action. One bright example is young people and the formation of sub-cultures, the course encouraged me to study few groups of young people in different settings with various sub-cultures and the interesting findings gives me the courage to design specific campaigns to address some of the challenges they face through my institution. After my course I was also requested to support to support nine countries in Africa to establish a youth empowerment structure called the Youth Action Movement (YAM) of IPPF, I am proud to announce that this structure exist in almost all the counties in Africa now!  

The major challenges I would like to point out are the long delay in graduating the students was not motivating at all; the biggest challenge is and would be from the diploma what next?   

In conclusion I would like to thank the Government of the Gambia, The Commonwealth Youth Programme Africa Centre, the course coordinating team, the Management Development Institute, and the University of Ghana for committing their energies and resources in developing the last and only hope of the world - the Youth