IMPACT Kick-off meeting in Portugal

DYPALL Network organised the Kick-off meeting of our new project “IMPACT – European Platform for Quality Development of Local Youth Councils” from the 23rd – 26th June 2025 in Setúbal, Portugal.

The ultimate goal of the project is to ensure meaningful and inclusive youth participation in decision-making processes at the local level through a quality, structured and functioning local youth council. With this project, we aim:

• To map and analyse existing models of Local Youth Councils (LYCs) in Europe
• To develop an interactive European Platform for LYC Quality Development
• To organise a capacity-building training course on LYC Quality Development for LYC stakeholders, including managers, political representatives, and youth leaders
• To provide a Toolbox for LYCs with tools and resources to support the capacity building of LYC stakeholders
• To mainstream local youth councils as spaces for quality and inclusive youth participation at the local level by disseminating the European Platform for Local Youth Council Quality Development to a wide youth work community at the European level

The meeting was a space for the partners to discuss and plan this two-year project during which we are going to build the European Platform for Quality Development of Local Youth Councils, an interactive online platform hosting an Assessment tool for Local Youth Councils, which can be used by stakeholders to improve the quality, increase the impact of their council, and plan a long-term strategy for sustainable, continuous improvement.

The meeting was enriched with an intervention from a representative of the municipality of Setúbal, who presented the work of the Youth Division of the municipality.

The project consortium is comprised of The Union of Local Youth Councils in Finland (Finland), La Fundación Francisco Ferrer Guardia (Catalonia, Spain), Bataljong (Flanders, Belgium) and DYPALL Network. This project, as well as the overall work of our consortium on the topic of local youth councils, is based on creating synergies between practices and practitioners in the field of education, training and youth.

The project is funded by the Erasmus+ programme through the Finnish National Agency, and the meeting was organised with the support of the Youth Department of Setúbal municipality.