Diversity in Youth Policy Program

The project

Migrant youth are underrepresented in youth services in the Netherlands. Therefore the Ministry of Interior and Kingdom Relations supported ZonMW to execute the Diversity in Youth Policy Program. The aim of the programme was to “diversity proof” the youth policy sector, with the measurable goal that migrant youth profit equally from all public youth services and welfare provisions as non-migrant youth. 

The program also sought to improve the existing mechanisms to reach migrant youth and their parents at an early stage in order to mitigate the damage caused by possible periods of neglect by support services. Together with migrant youth and parents, knowledge and skills are developed and implemented with professionals in the youth sector to promote and secure the development of migrant youth. In addition to migrant youth and their parents, the project targeted professionals, migrant organizations, municipalities, knowledge institutes and educators in order to build capacity of existing service providers. Concretely speaking, the program consisted of an awareness raising campaign, cultural sensitivity trainings and the identification of bottlenecks migrant youth and their parents face when accessing support services.  

The program fostered cultural sensitivity in the public youth services and welfare provisions by creating a measurement tool for the intercultural quality of interventions. Through specifically targeting youth and their parents, moreover, the program fostered sensitivity to age differences.

The impact of the good practice

The pilot phase of the Pre-Bachelor offered 23 places for beneficiaries of international protection with an ICT An independent evaluation report notes that the program has realized all intended outputs. Awareness of intercultural competence and of the importance of improving access to migrants has increased among stakeholders within the youth service sector. Knowledge gaps with regards to intercultural competence have been identified and activities have been undertaken to close those gaps. Youth service professionals were trained in intercultural competence.