Programme Overview 

Are you concerned about some of the big issues of our time such as climate change, global conflict, migration, poverty, racism, hunger, and right-wing extremism?  Consider the NUI Certificate in Global Youth Work and Development Education, a Level 8, Special Purpose award delivered by the National Youth Council of Ireland in partnership with Maynooth University.  It is aimed at those working in the youth sector and will be of interest to anyone looking to develop knowledge, skills, and competence in a global youth work approach through a transformative development education practice.   

The programme begins on November 15th, 2025, and is delivered over 100 contact hours of blended learning, a mixture of online and on campus learning. 

What is a global youth work approach?  

Youth work: 

Youth work is a planned programme of education, and it is a profession based on a set of core values and principles, with a focus on challenging inequality and supporting the social and personal development of young people.   

A global youth work approach:

A global youth work approach helps young people safely explore complex ideas, develop their political and civic voices, and connect their personal experiences to global narratives. This is especially vital given current global conflicts, the impact of culture wars evidenced by Ireland’s growing far-right movement, the borderless climate crisis, and widespread distrust in media and institutions. These global challenges significantly impact young people, youth workers, and wider society.  

Resourcing youth workers: 

Youth workers importantly need spaces where they are resourced, and where they can build skills to:  

• Step into their role as educators, not as subject experts, but as curious collaborators with young people.  
• Help young people to engage with multiple perspectives, starting from their own story. 
• Develop an understanding of their work as an anti-oppressive practice and become confident in integrating this into the day-to-day work.  

Applications are now CLOSED!

This programme is funded by Irish Aid.

Programme Aim

The programme encourages, supports and facilitates youth organisations to become effective settings for global youth work and development education practice, with a focus on deep learning and working from theory into practice.  

Key Benefits 

• Reflect critically on personal values, attitudes, behaviours, and your connection to global citizenship. 
• Understand your own practice, including UBU work, within a global youth work framework. 
• Engage and reflect on non-formal and transformative learning methods, utilizing a wide range of creative tools and processes in youth work delivery. 
• Learn from Global South scholarship and perspectives to reframe an approach to challenging systemic inequality. 
• Develop your practice and confidence in applying a transformative global youth work approach and critical consciousness concepts. (Freire, 1970). 
• Learn to expand your capacity to hold space for multiple, moving layers of complexity, complicity, and uncertainty (Andreotti, 2020). 
• Grow in your practice through the transformative potential of a global youth work approach, by suspending assumptions and deconstructing and reconstructing ways of knowing and being (Sallah, 2014, 2020).    

Assessment is continuous throughout the programme and includes essays, reflective writing, individual and group work, presentations, and the delivery of an interactive project with young people, peer youth workers or youth work managers or board of management. 

The course will be of interest to:

• Those who are experienced youth workers, working in the youth sector and want to deepen their knowledge and increase their insight into global youth work and increase their transformative education skills.
• Youth work volunteers who wish to develop their understanding of global justice transformative education and apply this in their work with young people.
• Youth workers/youth educators who want to shape organisational youth work practice and policy in the area of transformative development education

The course will begin on November 15th 2025 and it will finish on June 27/26, 2026.  

Eligibility

Please note that applicants for the Certificate must be: 

• Aged at least 21 years old on 1st January 2025. 
• Participants must be currently working in Ireland as a volunteer/ paid employee / contractor with young people in a youth work / non-formal education setting, have support from their organisation to take part in the Certificate, and have support to deliver a youth focused assessment as part of their coursework and final assessment towards the end of the Certificate. 
• You must be able to identify a group of young people, or youth workers or board of management- in a youth work context, to work with, to deliver the final assignment of this programme. 

Delivered by:

The NUI Certificate in Global Youth Work and Development Education is developed and delivered in partnership by Maynooth University and the National Youth Council of Ireland. 

The Certificate team is led by the Global Youth Work team at NYCI (including Dr Sally Daly, and Valerie Duffy) and staff at Maynooth University, with a wide range of guest facilitators and inputs from global youth work practitioners. A member of staff at the Department of Applied Social Studies, Maynooth University acts as Academic Director of the Certificate programme. 

Applications are now closed!!!!