Get Inspired to Improve Your Outreach with Youth Participation – Case Study of the Dutch National Agency

Young people as advisors and trailblazers

The Dutch National Agency has taken several steps to improve youth participation in their own work and strategic planning. They try to involve young people as co-creators and designers of specific projects such as “Democracy Reloading” and DiscoverEU, in addition to EuroPeers and the Youth Ambassadors initiative.

The Dutch National Agency has also started an initiative of Youth Ambassadors to consult young people on various issues. “They give us advice on what kind of tone of voice to use in communication, which channels to choose, how we should reach out, etc. Some of the advice has not been easy to follow up, for instance, starting a new channel when we felt our agency already had too many channels,” Linda shares examples.

Valérie, who has been involved as a Youth Ambassador for some time, remembers these discussions on channels. “The National Agency was super nice, but their communication style seemed a bit outdated to us and considering young people as an important target group, we proposed they go on Instagram. They were hesitant at first but after some consideration, they agreed. We then helped the agency to start the channel and generated content for them. It’s great to see their Instagram account is still active and has gained more followers,” Valérie recalls.

The youth engagement in the Dutch National Agency is not only focusing on communication campaigns, as Youth Ambassadors are able to share their ideas and advice on how the National Agency could better improve young people’s experiences with youth exchanges, youth participation, DiscoverEU, non-formal education and young people’s involvement in the National Agency. The Youth Ambassadors mandate lasts from 4–6 months and the Dutch National Agency has had three groups of young ambassadors giving input to their work already. Linda emphasises that in all groups, the majority of young people had no prior experience with Erasmus+ and European Solidarity Corps programmes, which helped the agency to get useful input on how to better reach out to new young people.

Young people experience many barriers

Valérie became interested in working with the Dutch National Agency to learn about the opportunities of the European Union. ​​However, the issue lies in information divide, as she herself was one of many young people who had never experienced Erasmus+ nor European Solidarity Corps projects and was unaware of the opportunities.

“Thanks to becoming involved in the work of the agency, I learned a lot about the opportunities. This gave me the feeling that I can also participate, and since then I have been involved in two Erasmus+ short term projects and went to Krakow, Poland for an academic exchange. I’m now promoting this all to other people. I realise over and over again that most of them have no idea about these possibilities. When they hear what’s available for them, their eyes light up,” Valérie comments.

“It seems that there is almost a problem of two polarities – those young people who are very informed and involved in the youth programmes and those who don’t know about these possibilities at all. The information should be more accessible for everyone,” says Valérie and emphasises that the role of communication here is crucial.