Austria - VJZ/Club Nautilus

Austria - VJZ/Club Nautilus

The Association of Viennese Youth Centres is a Non-Governmental Organisation, but mainly supported financially by the municipality of Vienna. The Association employs app. 300 persons (about 100 fulltime), most of them as youth-workers directly in the field. Therefore it is one of the main employers in social work in Vienna.
The range of activities is:

  • Open youth work in youth-centres and youth clubs
  • Detached youth work
  • Training courses, especially in creativity (drama, dance, music)
  • Counselling
  • Organising events, especially in the fields of music and sport
  • Special programs during holiday seasons, such as camps and international exchanges
     

The youth centre "Nautilus" is located in a suburban area of Vienna called Großfeldsiedlung. The Nautilus is rather big (1100 qm) what allows a wide variety of activities. Our main offer is open youth work but beneath we offer rehearsal rooms, an audio and video studio, a dance studio and two self-governed clubrooms.

We have a gender-balanced and multiethnic team of 8 social- and youth worker and have opened from Monday to Saturday. From May to October we also offer detached youth work.

Most of our visitors have migration background, they are so called “second generation kids”. Their parents come from Turkey, former Yugoslavia, Eastern European or African countries. In the recent years this cultural diversity has increased in the Grossfeldsiedlung. Most of the youngsters come from underprivileged families and are rather non-academic.

One of our principles is that participation on every activity is on voluntary basis! Our aims are on one hand to enable our target groups to extend their acting alternatives and perspectives, on the other hand to create a relationship that allows the kids to see us in a position of trust and contact us in crisis situations.

Our programme always has strong participative components. We are not planning our contents for month in advance but try to react on recent interests or problems brought in by the target groups.
A further field of our work is socio-political lobbying and networking.
Read more --> here: https://nautilus.jugendzentren.at/