“Climbing the Ladder: fostering a culture of Youth Engagement (CL-YE)” Advisory group meeting in Brussels, Belgium Activity Advisory group of CL-YE project had its first in-person meeting from 3rd-6th December 2024 in Brussels, Belgium. The Advisory Group on Youth Engagement is a group of 12 experts from different countries in Europe with concrete experience in mechanisms, structures, and models of youth engagement with a mission to support the consortium of the CL-YE project in planning, researching, and delivering the main project outputs. The Advisory group meeting, led by DYPALL Network and hosted by AER, was a space for the experts to discuss and share common ground and experience as they dived into different mechanisms for youth participation across Europe. They spent a lot of time deliberating the strengths and ‘watch-outs’, key success indicators, and quality markers of different mechanisms — youth councils, youth ambassadors, youth advisory groups, youth steering groups and youth-led research, among others. The main focus of this meeting was to gather inputs from the experts on the Qualitative guidelines, the publication to be developed within the project that will provide at least 8 different guidelines (step-by-step plans) for different mechanisms of youth engagement, which are meant to guide practitioners, policymakers and other stakeholders in the elaboration and establishment of such models of youth engagement, through a transparent, inclusive and participated process, in line with good practices and recommendations in the field of youth. The Advisory group members were also consulted on the platform that will be developed in 2025 in order to guide practitioners and policymakers in the establishment of mechanisms for the engagement of young people. The Advisory group also joined a part of the programme of the CL-YE that was happening in parallel well in order to visit and learn more about European decision-making bodies and institutions. The project is led by DYPALL Network in partnership with Europiamo ETS (Italy), YEPP EUROPE (Germany), Nordland fylkeskommune (Norway), EDYN (Slovakia), @Assembly of European Regions – AER (France), SQLearn (Greece) funded by Erasmus+ European Youth Together programme.