Aleksandra Mangus merges her extensive professional experience in communications with her passion for the European youth sector to contribute to European values and promote them. Since she collaborated with UNESCO and published her Master’s thesis on the digital citizenship of international youth in 2019, she has authored and managed several research and communications projects at SALTO PI; attended as keynote speaker at various capacity-building events at the Council of Europe and Estonian National Agency; organised, hosted, facilitated and reported on youth-focused events such as SALTO Awards & Europe Talks Solidarity conference. Her work has been published in SALTO’s Participation Resource Pool, European Youth Portal, Mihus magazine (Estonia), Verke blog (Finland), etc.

Corina Pirvulescu has over 12 years of experience in youth-related programmes and policies, in Romania, the USA and at European level. She has focused on youth participation in decision-making processes and electoral engagement. Corina has been part of the youth movement and youth sector, starting as a youth representative and continuing as a professional, advising public institutions, consulting for different international organisations and co-authoring various publications on youth participation.

Cristina Bacalso is an independent research consultant based in Berlin, Germany, with a specialisation in public policies and programming for adolescents and youth. She has over 12 years of experience in policy, research, and advocacy, including 5 years as the Research Coordinator for Youth Policy Labs, a global think-tank specifically focusing on youth. She has led methodology development for research projects on youth for UN agencies (ex. UNICEF, UNDP, UN Secretary General’s Envoy on Youth), international NGOs, European agencies, and national governments. Her research specialisations are in literature and policy reviews, consultations with youth, survey development, focus groups, and participatory research with young people. Most recently, she completed a year-long mapping and synthesis of evidence on adolescent development for UNICEF Innocenti, which will go on to inform a new global research agenda on adolescents. Cristina is a co-author of the Commonwealth’s 2016 Youth Development Index; a member of the UNICEF expert group on adolescent participation; an On Think Tanks “Integral Leaders for Global Challenges Fellowship” alumni; and a member of the pool of European Youth Researchers coordinated by the partnership between the European Commission and the Council of Europe in the field of youth.

​Dan is researcher and practitioner specialising in inclusive youth participation with over 20 years experience working with children and young people in the voluntary, public, for-profit and academic sectors. His research focuses on how children and young people’s participation can influence policy, as well and the development of participatory structures and processes. Originally a youth worker at local and regional level in the North West of England, he now works throughout Europe and beyond supporting a variety of organisations, to develop their approach to youth participation. In 2017 he was invited to re-develop the consultation process behind the EU’s Youth Dialogue. This engages nearly 50,000 young people from across the EU, and was instrumental in developing the new European Youth Goals. In 2020, his advice paper to the Ukrainian Government led to a revision of a draft law which enabled under 18s to participate in local civic processes.

Facilitator and a trainer in the field of youth. He holds MA in Communication Sciences and currently is attending PhD in the same field. For the last ten years, he has been working as consultant for public relations for different NGO’s and has implemented several campaigns related to civic education and sustainable energy. He regularly works as a trainer in the field of youth and school education. Domagoj is member of the trainers’ pool of Croatian National Agency and SALTO SEE and is also working with other NA’s and other institutions such as European Parliament and Council of Europe, as well as private companies and NGO sector.

Evaldas Rupkus is a project manager, trainer and author in fields of youth and Media and Information Literacy. He has been working for Lithuanian Youth Council LiJOT, Eurodesk Lithuania, Goethe Institute, ERYICA and International Youth Service of Germany IJAB. Evaldas has started his career as a radio host of youth programmes, later he has launched the youth information and counselling system in Lithuania. At the moment he works in the Media development Asia and Europe department of the Deutsche Welle Akademie. There he focuses on MIL topics like curricula development in countries like Mongolia, Moldova, Ukraine or the Baltics.

Georg works as a Programme Officer at European Solidarity Corps Resource Centre in Vienna, Austria. He formerly worked as a Youth Participation Coordinator at SALTO Participation and Information Resource Centre and before that, at the Austrian Youth Council where he was coordinating and developing Austrian Structured Dialogue activities since 2014. As part of the European Steering Committee on Structured Dialogue, Georg was the process architect for developing the European Youth Goals. Together with the Austiran National Agency of Erasmus+ Youth he organised the European Union Youth Conference in Vienna, Austria in September 2018.

Maia works as a Development Specialist at the University of Tartu and the main focus of her job, as well as her research, is in the field of information disorders. As research suggests, it is not possible to fight against the destabilising effects of the phenomena without involving media and information literacy. Taking this into account, Maia balances her research with Media and Information Literacy (MIL) projects, both as a project lead and a youth trainer. Her main focus for the coming years will be to find and highlight best-practice MIL training that could be taken from the formal and informal education system, which tend to cater to the young, but also to the whole population. She is currently coordinating the Baltic MIL network, in order to create a multinational hub to fight disinformation. She also heads the Estonian Digital Research Centre, which looks after the interactive information manipulation risk matrix at Disinfotest.org.

Martti Martinson is an Honorary Fellow at Victoria University, Australia and his research and advocacy work is focused on the enabling environment for youth participation in decision-making processes. He is a strong advocate for the concept of human rights based youth work and legislating youth participation.

Freelance journalist based in Chișinău and a strong believer in the power of informed societies where media and education both play a crucial role. Since 2016 she is DW Akademie coordinator of projects such as introduction of media literacy in school & university curricula as well as non-formal activities in this field in Moldova.

Neringa has a passion for youth empowerment and global civil society partnerships to advance social justice. She is currently an MPhil/PhD candidate at SOAS, University of London, where her interdisciplinary research focuses on youth participation in the decision making within the Euro-Mediterranean development partnership. Neringa is also the Director of Humanity Consulting and a Member of the Pool of European Youth Researchers at the EU-CoE Youth Partnership.
Neringa’s policy experience includes working at the Politics Section of the EU Delegation to Myanmar and serving at the Advisory Council on Youth of the Council of Europe, where Neringa focused on Minority Rights, Roma youth participation, and North-South cooperation. Neringa has also co-lead several Youth Forums in Asia, MENA and Eastern Africa, bringing together CSOs, entrepreneurs, academics and intergovernmental organisations (the EU, AUC, UfM, ASEAN) to facilitate youth-lead policy recommendations, i.e. “Fostering EU-MENA Cooperation through Youth Empowerment and Innovation to advance the Sustainable Development.”

Helderyse is based in Portugal. Her path in youth policy/youth work started as a young representative and volunteer in the student council and later in Conexão Lusófona, a youth organisation based in Portugal where she managed projects aimed to promote intercultural dialogue through language and culture in the community of Portuguese-speaking countries.
She has been working for the past 6 years as a policy officer at the Portuguese National Youth Council, where she coordinates the EU Youth Dialogue and the International affairs portfolio. In this capacity, she has managed several projects and has developed and implemented advocacy strategies at a national and European level, mainly related to youth rights, youth participation and youth policy. At the international level, she is the liaison officer of the Portuguese Speaking Countries Youth Forum at ICMYO’s (International Coordination Meeting of Youth Organizations) taskforce.
She holds a bachelor’s degree in Translation and a Master in Languages Sciences and is currently pursuing a Master’s in International Studies.

Tijana has worked for more than 10 years in the media and information literacy field. As Project Manager in Novi Sad School of Journalism, apart from writing and implementing projects (national and international level), her job was to coordinate media and information literacy vocational seminars for school teachers. More than two thousand teachers have participated in this program. A part of managing this activity and being a trainer, she has been a co-author of educational programs and author of educational materials for this seminar. Next to this, she has coordinated a few more MIL projects on both regional and national levels. These projects included research work, MIL ToT for CSO representatives, MIL summer camps for teachers and pupils, advocacy campaigns, workshops for children, production of multimedia educational materials, etc. She is also one of the founders of the “Fake news tracer” Serbian fact-checking portal and “MilCitizens” portal dedicated to mapping MIL activists and experts around the globe.
In addition to the Novi Sad School of Journalism, she was hired as a master trainer and consultant for Serbia in the field of media literacy by IREX Serbia.

Bruno graduated in Social Education at the University of the Algarve in Faro, Portugal. During his educational path he lived abroad, namely in Brazil, India and Scotland. For the past 15 years, Bruno has been actively engaging in international youth work, working as an expert and external consultant for several institutions, such as the European Commission and the North South Centre of the Council of Europe. He previously took office as SecretaryGeneral of Youth for Exchange and Understanding. Bruno currently works as the coordinator of DYPALL Network, an European platform engaging more than 60 members in 32 European countries, supporting youth policy development and youth participation at Municipality level.

On the training field have been engaged in the pool of trainers of the European Youth Forum, and coordinated the pool of trainers of the Portuguese National Youth council and actually collaborates with SALTO Euromed, SALTO Participation & Information and several National Agencies and international organisations on the development of several training programmes.

Branko Čečen is a Director of Center for Investigative Journalism of Serbia (CINS), a winner of European Press Prize and other international, regional and local awards for investigative journalism. After reporting for Serbian media (since 1992), he continued professional education in the United States and returned to be trainer and faculty teacher, before taking over the position in CINS. He served on the Board of Directors of the Organized Crime and Corruption reporting project. He worked for scores of independent media as an Editor and a reporter, covering topics like Balkan wars, crime, corruption and other. Mr. Čečen is proud to be a part of the IREX Serbia team, which implements the “Learn to Discern” (L2D) project focused on spreading media literacy in Serbia. As a lead Trainer for Trainers and a consultant for syllabus, methodology and co-author of topical podcasts on L2D program. Branko is having great fun teaching citizens and high-school teachers media literacy.

Dr Alicja Pawluczuk is an ICTD Research Fellow at the United Nations University, and a Strategic Consultant on defining Digital Transformation at SALTO PI. Alicja’s research and community education practice focuses on digital youth work, youth digital inclusion, and gender digital inclusion.

Sarah is a communications specialist with 15 years’ experience working in-house for a wide range of organisations and institutions, from international NGOs to EU associations and institutions. More recently, she has been advising clients as a freelance communications consultant – based in Brussels – working with organisations on enhancing their communications.