Youth work

The role of the division of youth work in the Finnish Supervisory Agency is to develop youth services and to implement the objectives of national youth programmes and policy. We develop youth work and services for young people in cooperation with municipalities and the third sector.

Our core tasks

• Regional implementation and development of nationwide youth work and youth policy  
• Awarding government grants and the impact assessment of grants awarded  
• Providing information guidance to the sector 
• Gathering data on youth work and youth policy 
• Assessing the adequacy, quality and accessibility of services for young people  
• International cooperation  
• Other tasks assigned by the Ministry of Education and Culture

Central government grants

We award government grants for outreach youth work, the Finnish Model for Leisure Activities, youth work in schools and educational institutions, local recreational activities for children and young people, the development of regional and local youth sector activities, and youth workshop activities in accordance with the Government Programme.   

As part of the monitoring and development of government grant activities, we also assess the impact, efficiency and added value of the funded projects in the field of youth work.

Learn more about the government grants we award (in Finnish).

Continuous training and professional development

We organise continuous training and professional development and a variety of other events for those working with young people. At these events, we describe current phenomena in the youth sector and distribute current information concerning the field.  

See our events and trainings.  

Production of information

We collect statistics on youth and youth work across Finland and publish the results on the nuorisotilastot.fi youth work statistics website. The statistics, visualisations and reports are intended to support practical youth work and decision-making as well as to be freely available for everyone.  

The Finnish Supervisory Agency is responsible for assessing the availability of basic services, including youth services. The assessment is carried out every two years. We collect information on the availability, adequacy, quality and accessibility of services for young people through national surveys. 
The Finnish Supervisory Agency supports the documentation of youth work by providing the PAR customer system for outreach youth work and youth workshop activities, as well as the nuoDo documentation system for municipal youth work.  

We maintain and manage the following information systems and websites (in Finnish): 

• Nuorisotilastot.fi  
• PAR-systems 
• Entit.fi / aikalisatoiminta.fi 
• yhteysetsivaan.fi 
• nuodo.fi 
• lvvavustukset.fi

International cooperation

We promote the internationalisation of young people and provide international partnership and networking opportunities for youth work professionals.  

Examples of international cooperation:  

• Providing Erasmus opportunities with the Finnish National Agency for Education. Erasmus+ is the EU programme for education, training, youth and sports. Learn more about Erasmus+.
• Europe Goes Local is a long-term cooperation project that develops cooperation in municipal youth work in Europe. The Finnish Supervisory Agency is involved in the expert group of the cooperation project. Learn more about the cooperation project.
• Nordic collaboration within OYW is a cooperative group for outreach youth work, where information and good practices are shared on the implementation of outreach youth work in the Nordic countries.

Communications 

We communicate about our current tasks, such as government grants, training and information production. Information related to government grants is collected on the lvvavustukset.fi website (in Finnish). We publish a Finnish language newsletter that you can subscribe to. In addition, you can find us on social media:

• Instagram: @lvvsivistys (in Finnish)
• Facebook: @lvvsivistys (in Finnish)