About the project

APEL project combines the efforts of 4 partners, reflecting current challenges and trends in the field of youth work from different regions of Europe – Central (Slovenia and Austria), Eastern (Bulgaria), and Western (Netherlands). Our project mission is in line with the EU Youth Strategy 2019-2027, emphasizing on the need to further the quality of youth work. In this strategic document, Member States are encouraged to focus on promoting dialogue and participatory mechanisms at all levels of decision-making, for example through YOUTH COUNCILS, paying special attention to feedback mechanisms and outreach to youth with diverse backgrounds. A stable trend in countries with long-term tradition of youth participation in shaping important policy initiatives can be seen, eventually final decisions are taken by the “power holders”, which in most cases are adults. This is a cross-sectoral challenge with a lot of underlining factors, requiring systemic actions.

Our overall aim is to equip youth workers with necessary methodology and resources to empower youth leaders, so that they can be more effective in encouraging participation of young people in the policy-making process on local and national, and eventually EU level. By empowering youth leaders, we will support the policy dialogue in a bottom up manner.

In terms of qualitative outcomes the project expects to achieve:

–        Improved professional competences of youth workers in partner organisations, associated partners and beyond to deliver empowerment training to youth leaders;

–        Improved leadership skills of youth leaders in representing youth’s voice and empowering the youth perspective in dialogue with policy-makers;

–        Improved awareness of relevant stakeholders in partner countries on youth leadership empowerment and effective dialogue between policy-makers and young people.

The long-term impact will be creating capacity of youth communities of pro-active participation in policy-making processes. Increased participation of young people in policy-making dialogues will lead to adopting policy decisions that are closer to the needs of communities, hence will lead to positive and sustainable results.

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