The seminar “Evidence based youth policy development” has brought together 28 youth researchers and practitioners from 14 European countries: Lithuania, Norway, UK, Germany, Cyprus, Romania, Spain, Latvia, Poland, Bulgaria, Slovenia, Portugal, Turkey and Italy. The core idea of the project was to bring together youth researchers and practitioners from different European countries to develop set of tools that can be used Europe-wide to analyses youth (policy) situation.
The situation of youth policy development and the importance of research differs across Europe, thus the seminar was great space to reflect upon the current situation of youth policies and upon status of research in the process of policy development. This sharing of different realities brought both inspiration and advocacy arguments for improvement of situation – policies should be drafted together by decision-makers, representatives of constituency (youth in this case) and researchers. Besides influencing policy making, the cooperation between researchers and practitioners-youth representatives and youthworkers- would help to better understand and further develop the methodologies and approaches in youth research.
The findings of the seminar suggest some possible improvements of the Structured dialogue in the youth policy field; importance and ways of cross-sectoral cooperation; highlight added value of non-formal education.
As a great side effect, this meeting has strengthened cooperation of the researchers and will open doors for more researchers and practitioners joining POYWE (Professional open youth work in Europe), Nordic youth researchers network and other professional networks.