The Development of UK Youth’s Youth Achievement Awards

The Youth Achievement Awards are a well-respected national award, with over 17,000 young people from over 1,000 different youth groups participating in the Awards. In the past year 4,500 young people have received recognition from ASDAN for their achievements in the Youth Achievement Awards.

The Youth Achievement Awards were developed with two key purposes:

• helping youth workers develop more effective participative youth work.
• to recognise and accredit young people’s achievements and learning.

The Youth Achievement Awards started as a pilot project run from 1994 to 1997 funded by the National Lottery Board. The project successfully developed the first national award to utilise a youth work model in order to accredit young people’s achievements and learning from youth work.

The development stages of the Award were led by John Huskins, a leading educational consultant, drawing on the original framework and structure of the ASDAN Awards, which have been so successful in a formal educational context. We recommend that you read the following training handbooks:

• 'Quality Work with Young People - developing social skills & diversion from risk'

• 'From Disaffection to Social Inclusion - a social skills preparation for active citizenship and employment'