The Youth Service accounts for less than one per cent of the education budget but it has changed many young lives for the better.

Ken Callister, who last week retired after more than two decades working with the service, recalls some memorable moments.

It’s not exactly the Cinderella of education but it certainly doesn’t receive a huge amount of funding compared to the money spent on building new schools and achieving better exam grades.

But sometimes, when cash is scarce, other more valuable commodities like commitment, dedication and imagination come into play.

And occasionally even fearlessness, Ken Callister might add, when it comes to leading with ideas and finding the funding later:

’There’s some amazing risks that we’ve taken that have paid off,’ he says.

One example that Ken particularly remembers was when a youngster he was working with had the ambitious idea of bringing an established band over from the UK to play during TT, with aspiring local bands supporting.

With the help of then minister, David Cretney, they managed to secure indie band Cast and the concert was such a success that it raised the £10,000 needed to set up Soundcheck and buy equipment for it.

Ken has been a youth officer on the island since 1995 and headed the Youth Service from 2010.

He first chose youth work after teaching in a challenging secondary school in Bristol, where he noticed ’young people learning more at youth club than at school’ and realising its importance.

Ken said: ’Youth work is about the person and it’s based on the relationship rather than an educational outcome or an exam result.’

It’s about ’looking at the whole person,’ is how he characterises the role of the Youth Service.

Youth clubs around the island give youth workers the opportunity to build relationships with young people and for about half of those who attend it is their only form of after school activity.

Another important element of Ken’s work over the past two decades has been the number of projects he has helped set up to benefit young people.

One of the first of these, the Youth Motor Project, began in early 2000.

Ken recalls: ’One of the things the Youth Service ’couldn’t do’ at the time was anything to do with motor vehicles but we could see that here was an activity that we could use to engage some young people.’

Initially an evening and weekend activity, the project has now expanded to include sessions for pupils in school as well. It has also become a registered charity, with Ken as one of its trustees, which means that this is one of several ventures he will continue to be involved with even after his retirement.

One of the hardest parts of his job over the years has been finding money for staffing, which means that the Youth Service relies heavily on its 123 part-time staff, many of them young people who have attended youth clubs themselves and want to carry on helping.

As Ken concludes: ’In youth work you can’t do anything without people, it comes back to that relationship.

’You can have all the fanciest kit, the nicest places that you could possibly imagine -but unless you’ve got the people with the right values and the right skills and attitudes then none of it works.’