The Slovak and Dutch youth councils will join hands in a transnational project which aims to innovate and improve the consultation processes of the Structured Dialogue, both within their respective countries and throughout Europe. The project responds to the outcomes of the 4th Cycle of the Structured Dialogue on Youth by developing and sharing several consultation instruments that can be used by NWGs in order to increase the representativeness and inclusiveness of the consultations they conduct. Our belief is that that the employment of only one strategy (whether is it as a youth panel or another instrument) will not be sufficient and not desirable. Indeed, it is the combined or intertwined employment of different strategies that leads to a sufficient inclusiveness and representativeness of the consultation and the dialogue process and the outcomes/results that follow from it. To provide a transnationally tested ‘consultation toolbox’ that makes this possible, is not only quite ambitious, but also quite innovative in our view.The project is based on three pillars with corresponding objectives and project results:1. the development/design, the improvement, the testing and fine-tuning of an innovative set of six (proven successful) research/dialogue/consultation instruments that are:o increasing the inclusiveness and the representativeness of the SD-process (with a special focus on youngsters with fewer opportunities and/or in vulnerable positions)o of high quality, in their own and in their reciprocal applicationo inheritable by other NWG’s throughout Europe (for SD purposes and more generally)2. these (renewed) instruments will be brought together in a ‘consultation toolbox’ which will be shared with all kinds of relevant stakeholders within the respective countries and throughout Europe3. a transnational exchange-program of experiences and expertise focused on realising the first two pillars, powered by a close cooperation between the youth councils of Slovakia and the Netherlands. Besides the involved staff of the two youth councils the categories of participants who will (indirectly) benefit are threefold:· youngsters (but also experts and organisations) who will participate in the implementation/conduct of the consultation instruments: this will be around 2.750 youngsters, around 15 (professional) experts and around 15-25 educational institutes. Approximately 400-500 of them will be youngsters with fewer opportunities or in vulnerable positions· youngsters, experts and policymakers of other NWGs throughout Europe who will be actively informed (and where possible instructed) with regard to the adoption of the toolbox: this will be around 75 participants· facilitators and trainers (within Slovakia and the Netherlands) who will support the implementation of the instruments: this will be around 10 participants. We will set up and organise all kinds of activities with corresponding methodologies. This is structured around 4 seminars and all kinds of exchanging activities that are necessary to achieve the intended results. The core of our program is that we will improve existing consultation instruments (broad quantitative youth panels and methods to distribute questionnaires on the one hand, and the improvement of qualitative instruments like focus groups on the other) and we will design new ones (regional youth panels (partly) focusing on youngsters with fewer opportunities, and dynamic dialogue programmes within youth care institutes). During the project these (renewed) instruments will be brought together in a ‘consultation toolbox’ which will be shared with all kinds of relevant stakeholders within the respective countries and throughout Europe.The project will gain all kinds of impact and benefits, on the short and longer term. It increases the quality of the Structured Dialogue in the respective countries, but because of the structure/inheritable nature of the ‘SD Consultation Toolbox’ and our dissemination plan to launch it, we also expect to support other NWGs to adopt aspects of our outputs and thereby increasing the quality of their consultation activities. During the project, we will involve and empower all kinds of youngsters to give their input in a way that suits them and cooperate with policy makers and professionals to make sure this input resounds in (youth) policy. This is particularly important for those youngsters who have fewer opportunities or who grow up in a vulnerable position. We will describe and test the underlying mechanisms for successfully involving youngsters. Within our respective organisations, we will ensure that there is sufficient knowledge and capacity to provide relevant information to organisations that may approach us after the project formally ended. Furthermore, we will actively work together with the European Steering Comity / the trio-presidency that will succeed our own current presidency.
Background: According to EU Youth Report, published in September 2015, young people tend to favour flexible and issue-based forms of active participation on public policy such as participating in the projects of non-governmental associations, community-driven initiatives, joining social movements and expressing political opinions. On average, the figures remained relatively stable between 2011 and 2014, although important changes occurred. Slovakia number of active participation of young people declined while in Netherlands this number increased according to Eurobarometer. Frustration with traditional and institutionalized forms of political participation can also result in young people choosing to show their interest in issues or express their concerns without any (or with little) mediation by organized bodies or nongovernmental organizations. Objectives: to develop/design new innovative model of Structured Dialogue as a tool of empowerment of young people for political participation in the democratic life in Europe. This project followed up the outcomes of the fourth 18-month cycle of the Structured Dialogue in the Youth field. According to Implementation Toolbox and results achieved by regular consultations, this outcome recommends to innovate Structured Dialogue, promote alternative forms for political participation of youngsters, developing friendly, local and direct tools for participative democracy, involving youngster, and create a culture of participation at school. That's what we pursued by our project. The aim was to develop a methodology to create a Youth Panel on regional basis and the principle of representation of youth in the whole structure and diversity as permanent representative panels of varying composition which may be regional and national policymakers consult policies affecting youth. Number and profile of participating organisations; 2 NYCs from previous trio presidency, DNYC and SNYC. They are both the national leader organisation in the field of youth and also coordinator of the NWG for SD. Description of undertaken main activities: developing and modeling new innovative model for an activity within the Structured Dialogue as tool for young political participation and policy making based on the consultation of the policy with young people. Exchange of best practices of Structured dialogue methods. 3 seminars organise in Slovakia and Netherlands. The Youth panels organized within the project and the meetings of new formed Youth Panels which involved representatives of young people, also those from vulnerable groups. Results and impact attained: New methodology for the preparation and execution of the creating new Youth Panels as representative bodies of youth in particular country. With experience from all partner organizations we created a way how to make new way of consultation within the Structured Dialogue that serve to better dialogue between young representatives and decision-makers in developing youth policy. We created The toolbox of How to consult with youth which is a complementary outcome document that endeavours to give concrete guidelines for the implementation of the recommendations adopted by experts from two participated organisations. This outcome is published and distributed to all members organisation of each participated organisation of this project.