Field report: New opportunities to explore extended learning and youth development across the globe

The Global Extended Learning and Youth Development Association (GELYDA) is a new international membership organization “dedicated to understanding, supporting and improving expanded opportunities for learning, development and thriving in schools, afterschool and summer programs and communities.”

GELYDA was not on my radar screen until a colleague suggested that we submit a workshop proposal for the association’s first annual conference in Iceland. At 73, traveling to conferences isn’t high on my list. But I agreed for the same reasons many young people find their way into community youth programs: It was an opportunity to do something I was interested in with people I like in a place I’ve been curious about exploring.

The conference was quite good, but GELYDA itself was the real find. Read on for highlights of the first and ways to engage in the second.

The GELYDA gathering

The U.S. was well represented by Gil Noam, GELYDA co-founder and conference co-chair, and by Tom Akiva, Dale Blyth, Merita Irby, Helen Janc Malone, and Jane Quinn who shared the findings from recent national studies (The Power of Us, The Future of Youth Development), national frameworks (Thriving OST Workforce Initiative), evidence syntheses (Too Essential to Fail), and local ecosystem studies (From Stumbling Blocks to Building Blocks, Culture-Centered, Community-Based Arts Programs).

Whether at the podium or in the audience, each of us appreciated the opportunity to reflect with fellow researchers and practitioners from other countries. Highlights of these opportunities included:

• A site visit to a leisure (youth) center to learn about how the Department of Education and Youth and the municipality oversee afterschool programs, youth centers and outreach work, emphasizing interdisciplinary collaboration among professionals across programs and institutions.
• Provocative keynote presentations with discussion from the former Prime Minister of Iceland, now Director for Education and Skills at the Organisation for Economic Development and Co-operation (OECD), who shared powerful new international data on student perceptions, student readiness and well-being, and the need for education reform in the face of enormous world changes including the age of AI, and from two University of Iceland faculty on the development of civic agency in youth and the role of outdoor education as vital components of both school and leisure activities.
• Deep dives into countries’ extended education policies, programs, and practices. Workshop presentations from researchers studying extended education policy, program impact and practice improvement strategies from Australia, Iceland, Japan, Korea, and the United States.
• Findings from cross-national studies and presentations on setting-neutral research methodologies including, for example, a presentation on effective methods of engaging and supporting NEET youth (Not in Education, Employment, or Training).
• Multiple sessions on workforce issues and innovative training and credentialing frameworks that highlighted universal challenges in providing recognition, resources and career pathways for youth work professionals.

I came away from the conference with a column’s worth of reflections on preliminary evidence that the implementation of Iceland’s new policy that explicitly creates pathways for cross-system collaboration among practitioners is actually changing mindsets among school, social services and youth work professionals.

Ongoing engagement in GELYDA

Conferences, as always, have the equity/time challenge. Ability to attend is uneven and usually inequitable unless registration and travel expenses are heavily subsidized, which is a challenge, especially for an emerging group like GELYDA. That’s why I want to focus your attention on how you can engage in GELYDA from wherever you are at the moment. Three recommendations:

Spend 30 minutes on the website. It’s addictive. Clean design. Clear language. Intentional international representation. Just seeing blogs and resources on topics you care about sourced from Korea, Iceland, Germany, the United Kingdom — as well as the United States — is humbling. Reading them is exciting.

Dig into the new online magazine. This is their newest feature — a biannual magazine. Fittingly, the inaugural issue is focused on challenges and solutions for strengthening the youth work workforce. It includes a global overview of the state of youth work in Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe and the U.S. as well as in depth reviews of workforce issues and infrastructure in the United States, Australia and Africa.

Sign up to be a founding member. It’s free, at least for the next year as they are building their membership. Two years in, they have made an impressive downpayment against their goals.

I’ve just signed up to be a founding member. Please join me!

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In her columns, Karen Pittman is exploring the research behind the statement, “When Youth Thrive, We All Thrive.”

Merita Irby, co-founder of the Forum for Youth Investment, is a partner at Knowledge to Power Catalysts.