aye she thinks i’m funny as feck, some of the adventures i’ve had.

Well immediately after college I’d like to go travelling. 18 months of backpacking – not all at one stretch, but 6 months each in South-East Asia, South America and Africa.

The one that appeals to me most is South-East Asia… Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia… I’ve had my mind set on going there ever since I read The Beach, and I really want to visit Vietnam… I have a weird obsession with everything about the place, am currently hooked on any film about the ‘Nam war and the horror and chaos of it all… but also the environment appeals to me massively… I don’t know why really.

South America is somewhere I’d like to go, but I may drop it for more time in Asia, or somewhere else…

Africa is charity work, hopefully… and whilst on the others I’d be alone, I’m going with a couple of very close friends… we’ve yet to decide which registered charity to go with though…

As for the rough life-plan, I want to be a youth worker. I’ve yet to investigate the best route to this, but I’m not going to be part of social-services or anything… I’d either work for an independent youth charity or for a single establishment.

At college the social courses I could take were either working with young children (2-12) or adult disabled people – and whilst both these are commendable it’s not really what I want to do… there was nothing for the 12-20 bracket.

The motivation for it is because, for various reasons, I was in contact with numerous youth workers during secondary school… and they were brilliant. They engaged kids and turned them around, when the school and half of society were ready to write them off at 13-14 and shove them on the scrapheap. Music Technology could come in very useful, as one of the things used to engage young people in my experience was music, whether a radio show, songwriting, DJ’ing, producing etc.

I’m hoping to re-launch a youth radio station I was a presenter on at about 14… it was great, a top laugh and we used to open up the entire youth club and have about 50-60 kids downstairs chilling and listening to the shows being recorded upstairs. However 2 years ago the council sold off the upstairs, including our studio, as offices to-let. And then they complain ‘cos everybody is on the streets… fucking planks!

(sorry for the long reply… went off on one there!)

@ boothy

check this out http://www3.open.ac.uk/courses/bin/p12.dll?Q01C54 for youth work

volunteering for a couple hours a month at your local youth club will be useful, although youth clubs are all county council run. like you, i’m not sure about their value as they are all target / curriculum driven

check out the http://www.youthactionnetwork.org.uk/ to see if they have anyone local to you.. i run a youth action agency and it’s wicked

i’m sure we’ve had this conversation before, but google for your local youthbank, youth opportunities fund, youth capital fund, V cashpoint, mediabox… free money

also, south america is the new south east asia. big adventures and few european or north american tourists compared to SE asia

that course looks pretty good, seeing as uni isn’t my thing it could be right up my street. i found this though http://www3.open.ac.uk/courses/bin/p12.dll?Q01G03 seems the same thing but a foundation degree… i’m not really sure of the difference but based on entry requirements FD seem harder to get into, they have one other course in too.

i cant seem to get my head round youth action network… does it run youth work itself, or just deal with seperate youth workers?

we have had this conversation before mate, i’ve stored up everythin said in both memory and for links virtual memory… got bare links like princes trust, big bang, council fundin and licensin requirements for radio from ya

as for travellin… i’ll stick with south america, but is south east asia still worth a visit as well?

Boothy. that sounds really good 🙂 I definitely want to do something along those lines for the travelling and charity shit, I was looking to do some after i’ve finished my course but most of the ones available are for a year long placement and i don’t think i could handle doing something like that, it’s definitely something that i’m keeping in mind for after i’ve finished uni though.

Good luck with it 🙂