Skills Summary is a free and easy to use online tool that helps young people understand, recognise and talk about the skills they gain through youth work, volunteering, and other out-of-school opportunities.
By reflecting on their experiences, young people can see how much they’ve developed: from teamwork and problem-solving to communication, creativity and leadership. Skills Summary builds confidence, supports personal growth and helps young people tell their skills development story – whether that’s for learning, work, or life.
Why use Skills Summary?
- Reflect on the skills you’ve developed through youth work, volunteering and other activities
- Recognise your key strengths and areas for growth
- Build confidence in describing what you can do and what you’ve learned
- Create an online profile to track your development over time
- Gather endorsements from youth workers or mentors who’ve seen your progress
- Use what you’ve learned to support your next steps – in education, training, community action or employment
Who is Skills Summary for?
- Everyone working on or interested in their personal/professional skill development
- Skills Summary is in particular tailored to young people aged 16-25
- Youth workers and others, within their role supporting young people’s skill development
Want to learn more?
If you need any help signing up our using Skills Summary, check out our instructional videos:
Information for youth workers
Skills Summary is a unique innovative project and an online tool that recognises youth work as an educational process and provides a structured way to make its learning outcomes visible.
Skills Summary is both a process and a product:
- As a process, it guides young people, particularly those who may find traditional academic learning challenging, through meaningful reflection on what they’ve learned in youth work, volunteering, and other non-formal settings. It helps them recognise the real world value of these experiences by mapping them to a clear set of transversal (soft / transferrable) skills, building confidence and self-awareness.
- As a product, it enables young people to document and communicate their skills in a structured, professional format that can be used in CVs, interviews, education, or training applications, empowering them to represent themselves more fully and equitably in pathways to work and further learning.
Skills Summary supports the dialog between a young person and a youth worker or mentor. It can be used as:
- a self-assessment and self-reflection tool for young people,
- and a practice development and impact measurement tool for organisations
Visit our Skills Summary Resources page for helpful resources and inspiration about how to include Skills Summary in your youth work practice:
- Skills Summary Guide – how to use the tool in different youth work settings
- Skills Summary Manual – overview of the basic features of the tool
- How to measure the impact of youth work with Skills Summary
- Skills Summary Offline Version
- 14 skills posters
- DOs & DON’Ts for 14 skills cards
- and more…
Check out our free e-learning course to get step-by-step guidance on using Skills Summary in your youth work practice.
Do you want to get more familiar with the tool?
EXPRESSION OF INTEREST
You are interested in using Skills Summary with your young people? If you would like to receive more information about how to use Skills Summary and hear about resources and training opportunities, please complete the form below.
PARTNERS
Skills Summary is the result of a collaborative project between the National Youth Council of Ireland, Accenture and SpunOut.ie. It is funded by the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth and recognised as a measurement tool in the Youth Employability Initiative.
