Hungary
In Hungary youth work lacks basic recognition formally (meaning that there’s a lack of legal framework) while there are lots of initiatives happening at the local level, either meaning local youth services or organizations carrying out youth work often voluntarily.
To read further about the context of Hungary please check the YouthWiki: Youth work in Hungary Links to an external site.
Youth work at the local level
- The law regarding local municipalities serves as a reference point to carry out youth work activities at the local level, as it lists “dealing with sport and youth affairs” as one of the mandatory tasks of local municipalities.
- Depending on the will and financial capacity of the local municipalities we find youth work activities being organized, that concentrate on major cities resulting in the fact that young people are less likely to access youth work in smaller settlements and rural areas.
- Quiet often youth work is integrated into certain human services of the municipality. The most common ones are social services or cultural activities. If youth work is integrated into social services then the focus is often emphasised on prevention, while on cultural activities on providing leisure time activities.
- Besides municipal services, civil society organizations are quite active in offering youth work activities for young people at the local level. The diversity of how these activities are carried out is rich.
Youth work by civil society organizations
- There is a wide variety of youth work-related activities carried out by civil society organizations as mentioned above.
- Their scope of work varies also from local to national level and the focus may only concentrate on specific services (youth camps) to the full range of services in a format of open youth work.
- It is also common that based on service agreements with the local municipality civil society organizations are responsible for carrying out youth work.
Youth work in other fields
- There are several activities in youth work organized by a church (most common are the catholic and protestant churches).
- There are also school-related activities that may be the “equivalent” activity at a local level with youth work (especially in smaller settlements.)
- Scout movements are popular in Hungary that have connections to methods and practices in youth work but it’s debatable to describe it as youth work.