Building caring relationships with young people requires a fine balance between being open and maintaining ethical and professional boundaries. Drawing on your personal experiences is invaluable but how much you share and how you share it matters. Making meaningful connections with young people using storytelling and humor will help them relate to you. And that fosters trust and encourages learning.

Storytelling and humor are two of the most powerful tools any youth worker can have in their toolkit. Young people will find you more relatable and will be more likely to trust and open up to you. The key is to know how to use those tools without making the interaction more about you than about the young person.

You can learn how to hone these two powerful skills by attending this training. You’ll consider how to inject your personality into your youth work through your own stories. You’ll consider how to ensure you only share what’s appropriate to facilitate learning. And in the process, you’ll be better able to engage young people and support their positive development.