First online meeting of the Advisory Group on Youth Engagement under the project “Climbing the Ladder: fostering a culture of Youth Engagement (CL-YE)”

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 project “Climbing the Ladder: fostering a culture of Youth Engagement (CL-YE)” in planning, researching, and delivering the main project outputs.

The Advisory Group is planned to meet a total of five times (four online and one in-person) throughout the entire duration of the project. The first online meeting took place on the 29th and 30th of April 2024. During this meeting, the advisors had the opportunity to get to know each other and familiarize themselves with the project. They gave constructive feedback and valuable recommendations on the Literature Study – a database of resources developed by the project consortium, as well as for the process of developing the publication on models and mechanisms on youth engagement and the publication on good practices and case studies, as first project outputs. Finally, they also discussed and gave proposals on how to ensure the visibility and sustainability of the project results.

The project “Climbing the Ladder: fostering a culture of Youth Engagement (CL-YE)” addresses the need for effective and meaningful structures, mechanisms, and spaces for the active engagement of young people in policy-making and decision-making processes at the local, regional, national, and European levels.

Some of the key objectives of the project are:

• to analyse and understand the key features of current models and mechanisms for youth engagement in Europe;
• to collect and share successful practices that encourage young people, policymakers and practitioners to involve the youth perspective in policy-making;
• to create an accessible platform for implementing youth engagement mechanisms;
• to establish two networks (one of young facilitators for democracy and another one of young city/regional councillors) to promote citizen participation and democratic engagement at the local and regional levels throughout Europe.

This is a European Youth Together project funded by the European Union under the Erasmus+ programme.