Interview with Kris

Kris is a communities officer with the angus wide team working with young people all over angus. His role mainly covers youth engagement and youth participation and some of the current projects he is involved with is COP26 Local Champions and Scottish Youth Parliament.

What made you want to do youthwork?

Kris was part of Dundee football club when he was younger and through injury, he started sports coaching in different types of sports he said this is where he developed a passion for working with young people as he liked seeing and helping them overcome different barriers they may have faced in sport.

what pathway did you take into youthwork?

Kris started by completing a HND in Sports coaching &sports development and then went through his degree in Community Education. After completing his degree, he got a job with Dundee city council with Explore where they focused on young people at high school age, Kris then moved jobs to the social work department working with a private foster care agency that had young people coming through social work moving into foster care. Kris said this was challenging work as every young person has very different backgrounds, some young people come from traumatised backgrounds or a background with a lot of family problems where Kris helps them work through that. Kris then moved back to more youthwork based role with the angus council Community, Learning and development department as a communities officer.

What’s the best part of your role?

Kris said the best thing about his role was seeing young people and the community face to face where he can directly engage and build relationships with everyone. Kris said he also enjoys getting the young people involved in something that they are interested in and want to be involved in, then helping the young people work to achieve the outcomes for the group to make the original idea their own.