Starts today the International Conference “Youth Policy at Local and Regional Level” Portimão receives participants of 17 countries in a 4-day international conference on youth policies. Starting today, the city of Portimão is the host of the international conference “Youth Policy at Local and Regional Level: Developing our territories through youth participation in decision-making”. The initiative, organized by Cooperativa ECOS – Educação, Cooperação e Desenvolvimento, CRL in partnership with the Municipality of Portimão, and co-funded by the Erasmus + Programme of the European Union, will take place in the Auditorium of the Museum of Portimão between 12 and 15 April. The International Conference on youth policy at local and regional level, realized in the framework of the Project “DYPALL – Developing Youth Participation at Local Level“, brings to Portugal more than 22 civil society organizations, youth workers, youth leaders, young people, representatives of local authorities and researches to share, debate and present their perspectives and understanding on youth participation in the decision making processes at local, national and European level. Represented countries are Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Greece, Italy, Latvia, Luxembourg, Former Yugoslavian Republic of Macedonia, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovenia, Turkey, the United Kingdom. This activity aims at being a space to highlight and to bring into reflection how local youth organisations and local authorities can work together to develop local youth policies at local, regional and European level. Themes of debate will be: structured and mechanisms of participation of young people in decision making processes; spaces of youth participation (local, regional and national councils, fora and other spaces of informal participation); cooperation among youth organizations, civil society organizations and local authorities around youth policy and Youth Guarantee at local and regional level, together with the other relevant stakeholders. Updates on the Conference will be published daily in the Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/cooperativa.ecos and Twitter profile https://twitter.com/coopecos For more information: – Ana Morgado – ECOS, Project Manager: internationalconference@ecos.pt .