‘You have to see young people grow up’

It is Friday afternoon, about half past three. Schools are out, afternoon prayers in the mosque are over. But in Lab6, a collective building for youth work in Amsterdam-Slotervaart, there is a deathly silence. In the room with television and sofas for chilling, the lights are off and the door is closed. The music studio: ditto. The foosball table looks abandoned.

“Hmm,” says councilor Sofyan Mbarki. “Couldn’t something more happen here?”

“We try to organize something every day,” says Nesrine, a youth worker who happens to have a meeting in the building. “But right now there is nothing on Friday afternoon.” The collaboration between the various organizations housed in Lab6 is not exactly smooth, she says. “Ultimately, everyone is constantly fighting for themselves, for their own subsidy.”

This was not good, says Mbarki when he is outside again. “There must be commotion in a place like this on a Friday afternoon.” He looks in the direction of the shops on August Allebéplein. “We really need to step it up a notch. It just doesn’t work.”

Sofyan Mbarki (39), councilor for Economic Affairs, Youth Work and Sport (PvdA) has set a goal for himself: youth work in Amsterdam must improve. In these times of polarization, uncertainty and increasing poverty, he says, youth workers offer guidance and perspective. They are the ones who can protect vulnerable boys from Amsterdam North, South East or New West from a life under the Wajong Act or – worse – a career in organized crime.

For this, youth work needs to be overhauled. Because at the moment, says Mbarki, the situation in Amsterdam is “untenable”. The supply is so fragmented that in a district like Nieuw-West, nineteen organizations are subsidized, all for specific target groups. They hardly work well together – see the deserted Lab6 on Friday afternoon. The result, says Mbarki, is that “in certain neighborhoods the basic facilities for youth work are not in order.”

The municipality of Amsterdam, he immediately adds, “has also made it that way itself.” Market forces and short-term thinking have ensured that organizations are “no longer concerned with young people, but with the question: how do we win the tender again next year?” Youth workers, says Mbarki, actually benefit from being in the same neighborhood for twenty years. “You have to see young people grow up. Knowing the brother’s brother and the family. That infrastructure is gone. Every year a new party can join in and start all over again.”

“Organizations are no longer concerned with young people, but with the question: how do we win the tender?”

Sofyan Mbarki knows from his own experience how important youth work is – and he is happy to talk about it. He grew up in Osdorp, one of the poorest neighborhoods in Amsterdam, as the child of first generation guest workers from Morocco. He knows plenty of boys from the neighborhood with whom things did not end well. “It’s gone in all directions. Some guys have become top lawyers or pilots. I saw others later Investigation Requested. There are also boys I knew no longer alive. Killed in the criminal environment.”

He ended up in education through a higher professional education and various jobs – taxi driver, pedagogical employee in a department with juvenile forensic psychiatric patients. He taught at Calvijn College, a pre-vocational secondary school that managed to work its way up from a drain to a model school. Then he entered politics. For the past year and a half, Mbarki has been, as far as he knows, the first Amsterdam councilor who grew up in Nieuw-West – and still lives there.

Basement box off limits

He was able to get this far, says Mbarki, because he grew up “in a solid social infrastructure.” His parents gave him a “protected” upbringing: no hanging out on the street until late at night, being friendly to the neighbors, the cellar box was off-limits. Teacher Joke from the Osdorper Ban public primary school made time to help him get rid of his stutter (“There was no shortage of teachers yet”). And youth workers ensured that he and the other boys from the neighborhood were not bored and that their world was broadened. “There was always something to do. We went on outings to museums in the center of Amsterdam. This is how we learned that the city consisted of more than just Nieuw-West.”

Without all those people, things could have ended badly for him, says Mbarki. As a teenager, he hung out with neighborhood boys who did “stupid things.” “Those guys had stripped a car that was rotting away somewhere. Then things were traded: car radio, speakers, that kind of thing. I had no role in that, but I was arrested because I was part of that group. I was painting my room at home when the police rang the doorbell.”

“One of the boys had been caught and had given the names of everyone who was part of the group. Later we all went to see the boy who ratted us out. That turned into a fight and then the boy filed a report. I had not fought, but the police came to get me again, this time from school. I was held at the station for six hours.”

“An officer, his name was Marcel, then said to me: ‘You’re in pre-university education, what are you doing with these boys?’ I personally saw it as a prank, but he knew the files of those guys from the neighborhood. Then the penny dropped for me: what am I doing?”

“Years later I was in town with some friends, we were going out. On Leidseplein a police officer came to me from a van. That was Marcel, he recognized me. ‘Is it going well?’ he asked. “Do your best, eh!” Those are those moments when someone sees you. That is what youth work is all about.”

To improve youth work in Amsterdam, Mbarki wants less market forces (“this is possible without the law having to be adjusted”), longer contracts and better cooperation between organizations. And there will be an academy where youth workers can follow training and exchange experiences. Mbarki feels strengthened by a book that journalist Margalith Kleijwegt, who has been living in Nieuw-West for twenty years, wrote at his request. Her conclusion: the ‘soft power’ of youth work can make a difference, but in Amsterdam it has turned into a maze.

Occupational injury

Professional honor also needs to be addressed, says Mbarki. Youth work is a craft – a quite complicated one at that. “You have to win the trust of guests who do not owe you anything. What those youth workers do is truly Champions League. Yet they feel no recognition. Nowadays everyone is doing ‘something’ with young people.” There is a tile in his office in the town hall: ‘Just because you work with young people does not make you a youth worker’. “It’s just like with teachers. You can stand in front of a class, but that doesn’t make you a teacher.”

Another lesson that Mbarki learned in his youth: “Youth work is for everyone, including young people who are doing well. In fact, you must have them there to pull the difficult young people up. They need to see that people from the same street, with the same background, can succeed. In the youth center I came to, you had boys who had just gotten out of prison and boys who were studying for their final Latin exams in the same room.”

“Youth work is for everyone, including young people who are doing well”

When Mbarki visits organizations that receive subsidies, he encounters a population that is “quite homogeneous”. “Especially Moroccan Amsterdammers.” Youth work must “break away from ethnicity,” he believes. “Diversity is about much more than just color. Young people live in North Amsterdam who look like the ‘ordinary Dutchman’ but the same struggles as people with a Moroccan background. You can’t say to a boy like that: you have it easier because of you white privilege. He has a mother without a job and a father who is ill. He can’t get an internship. And then he is told: you belong to the target group that can arrange it for themselves. That makes it even more complicated for him.”

Over a hot chicken sandwich in a lunchroom on August Allebéplein, Mbarki comes up with another surprising reason why youth work must improve as quickly as possible: the election victory of the PVV. If a right-wing cabinet soon closes the borders, says Mbarki, the existing labor potential will become even more important – and therefore also those boys from Amsterdam Nieuw-West who are in danger of slipping away.

“If they don’t do anything too stupid before the age of twenty-five, you usually see a change afterwards. Then they want something to do with their lives. Many boys go into taxis or parcel deliveries. They are going to install fiber optic or in the solar panels. Those are the guys we have to do it with later. So it is also in Wilders’ interest that they do not slide.”

“If young people don’t do too stupid things before the age of twenty-five, you usually see a change afterwards”

Of course, the PVV’s victory “received” him, says Mbarki – but more as a PvdA member than as an Islamic Dutchman. “The sentiment against ‘the other’ is not new. Any Muslim can tell you that. As an adolescent I knew a Netherlands without right-wing populism. Before September 11 and the murder of Theo van Gogh, I was just an Amsterdammer with a Moroccan background. My Muslimness was never problematized. There is now a generation of Muslims who have never known the Netherlands other than Wilders. And the image that the Netherlands is by definition against you gets under your skin.”

Taken out of line

He can deal with it himself, says Mbarki. He talks about a trade mission from the municipality of Amsterdam to New York in April this year, of which he was delegation leader as councilor for Economic Affairs. “There were top officials, CEOs of companies. And who was taken out of line at JFK airport? The delegation leader.” Mbarki chuckles. “The others said: ‘He’s the deputy mayor of Amsterdam.’ But no, I had to come along. They had chosen me through an algorithm, they said.”

“When I returned to the waiting group everyone said: oh, how bad! Just like recently with the election results. But I said: ‘Guys, this just happens, as a Muslim you learn to deal with it.’ In the same way, the elections were a confirmation of what you already feel every day. I see the result mainly as a wake-up call voor de rêst.”

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Mohammed Azzamouri (l)and Bilal Saïdi at Plein ’40-’45 in Amsterdam Nieuw-West.” class=”dmt-article-suggestion__image” src=”https://images.nrc.nl/ewfF2rFVi6p8LXemxEJIrfsgfIc=/160×96/smart/filters:no_upscale()/s3/static.nrc.nl/images/gn4/stripped/data74049631-e92a9b.jpg”/>

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