The National Youth Agency: Rural Youth Network event asks: Is your youth work rural proofed?

The Rural Youth Network Focus Group is running an event to explore how effectively current youth work approaches are adapting to the social and economic realities of rural communities and their young people. It aims to identify examples of best practice to be shared among rural youth work practitioners and their managers, and also to identify areas of weakness where current initiatives and practices may be failing to promote work to challenge rural youth out-migration and the issues that drive it.

"This focus group comes at an important time within rural youth affairs," said a spokesperson for the Rural Youth Network. "The Commission for Rural Communities has highlighted the importance of rural youth out-migration, and both rural regeneration agencies and rural youth workers are increasingly finding innovative ways to work together to explore and address these issues.