Written by Nik Paddison
Can you tell us who you are, a little bit about yourself and what you do?
I am Anna Yeghoyan, I live in Armenia in a beautiful small town called Gyumri. I am a freelance trainer and consultant in the field of youth work and youth policy. I work at the grassroots level, national level, and international level.
At the local level I am in an organisation called Youth Initiative Centre. We manage five open youth centres and three smaller youth spaces in different towns and villages in the country. My grassroots contribution to youth work is that I am supporting the quality implementation of our organisation’s youth work offer across the eight physical venues that we are running through youth worker capacity building and supervision.
At the national level, I consult with the Ministry of Education, Science, Culture and Sport (the department responsible for youth affairs), on different strategic development processes. I was part of the working group that was developing our first Law on Youth Policy – it was adopted in 2025. I also had the privilege to be part of the expert groups designing two new legislative documents significant for the development of youth work, which are based on the provisions of the Law on Youth Policy. One is about youth worker qualifications – the methodology, youth worker competence framework and certification procedure. The other is about centre-based youth work and the methodology and procedures for running a youth centre in Armenia. And currently I am engaged in the process of modification of the youth worker training programme, which will be run by the ministry from 2027.
At the international level, I am delivering training courses which are most often connected to youth participation, inclusion and diversity. I also work as a facilitator on European conferences and the European Youth Work Conventions. Additionally at this level, I am a member of the International Youth Work Trainers Guild and have been a board member for the past two mandates.
You already mentioned several developments regarding youth work in Armenia, could you say a little more about it?
The second European Youth Work Convention (2015) became the biggest boost for doing something towards youth work development in Armenia. After that Convention, the state started training courses for youth workers. Then jumping forward ten years, in 2025 the Law on Youth Policy was adopted and within it, there are specific provisions for safeguarding youth work. For example, youth work is defined by the law, the role and concept of the youth worker is mentioned, and youth centres are specifically highlighted.
Youth work in Armenia, in the eyes of policy, is very much about service provision to young people through youth centres, although it should be noted that there are other forms of youth work in Armenia, including activities such as workshops, events, camps, etc. By law young people are defined as 13 to 35 years of age, however, in reality, most centre-based youth work targets teenagers. Youth work in Armenia is provided by civil society or civil society and municipality cooperation. The new law safeguards the youth work offer. It says that every municipality has to have a youth centre, their own local youth policy and a municipal youth officer (a certified youth worker) who is required to work closely with the youth centre.
We have also been developing the youth worker competencies framework for Armenia, which has been adopted into the sub-legislative document of the youth policy law. We looked at different competence models that already exist and I think we came up with quite an interesting and comprehensive framework that consists of 64 competences. Starting in 2027, official youth worker training will be based on this framework. It will be a hybrid programme with three residential training courses, local study visits, asynchronous online training, webinars, youth work practice, and mentor support.
A lot of things are happening for youth work and young people in the last few years. I think for me the best thing is that we have this partnership between the ministry, civil society and the expert community for decision making and policy development. This is not just a nice agreement, it is very participatory, for example, all these documents connected to youth work development in Armenia, they have been done in complete cooperation with the field.
„Our biggest priority in turning the European Youth Work Agenda into action is “developing and expanding the youth work offer”. In the last years the state has invested in infrastructure development, training of youth workers, and in making youth work more accessible.”
How are you connecting with the European Youth Work Agenda priority areas and the Roadmap following the 4th European Youth Work Convention?
Until recently Armenia has not been on board with this European process. Of course, we were participating in all the different international activities like the European Youth Work Conventions, but only in 2026 has there been cooperation between the SNAC Growing Youth Work and our ministry. My personal connection is that the ministry asked me to become the National Contact Point for the development of the Agenda in Armenia.
We are still figuring out how to translate the Roadmap and the Agenda into our local reality. But at the same time, we have been unknowingly contributing to the development of these different areas. Looking at the eight priority areas, I would say that currently our biggest priority is “developing and expanding the youth work offer”. In the last years the state has invested in infrastructure development, we have improvements for the training of youth workers, and we are trying to make youth work more accessible.
Another area for our current focus is “policy frameworks”. We are trying to make sure that youth work is safeguarded through different kinds of policy documents. For this I think we have been quite successful in the last year. At least for now we have the minimum of what we need to be able to move forward.
One area where we are not doing much just now is “promotion and recognition”. Yes, there is greater recognition by default simply because there is more youth work happening across the country. But in terms of activities and specific projects that are aiming at promoting and recognising youth work, there is not so much being done. This is especially so when we talk about social or societal recognition and particularly formal recognition. The youth worker is still not part of the official list of occupations.
What future activities are foreseen regarding developments of the Agenda?
National Youth Workers Association
We are pushing towards having some kind of lobbying body for youth work and youth workers. Hopefully this will be a national youth worker association. This would be a great support for bringing a collective voice for practitioners. We have formed an initiative group for this, and we have already been a part of several meetings with the ministry. However, I think we need to understand exactly what our role is at the national level before such a body joins the international community. We want to avoid the situation where we can have more influence at the international level than the local, which I think sometimes can be the case for a national association.
Youth work academy
We just had a big event in September about centre-based youth work. It was a good moment to introduce the Agenda to a wider audience. Apart from such one-off events, I would like to see the development of an annual youth work(er) forum, inspired by the European Academy on Youth Work, at the national level. I would see this as a tool for exploring innovation in youth work and the diversifying of our youth work offer.
Thinking forward to five years time, where would you like to see youth work in Armenia?
If you asked about it two years ago, I would say I have no clue because it looked like we were not going anywhere. Right now, it is a really unique time when we can actually allow ourselves to look forward because things are moving.
I have a feeling that we will get to formal recognition of youth work and the professionalisation of youth work. Right now, because municipalities are obliged to employ at least one youth worker, I feel there will be a demand in the near future for the professional education of these youth workers.
Another thing I dream about is “not” having to explain to people what youth work is and that there will be social recognition. So, when a kid goes home from the youth centre and says, “my youth worker said this and that…”, parents will understand what a youth worker is. I hope in five years time if we do a similar interview, I will be able to tell you that my mom knows what youth work is.
Another wish is that in five years we are still as connected to the European youth work field as we are right now.
It is extremely important for us that the international youth work offer stays present because it has been the driving fuel for youth work development at the local and national levels in non-EU countries like Armenia.
We need things like the European Youth Work Conventions because they include us, and we need things like the Agenda and the Roadmap because they guide us and give us official European material to work with and to lobby for when we meet with ministries and municipalities.
