RAY DAY 2025

On 20 October, we celebrate the RAY Network and our research with a RAY Communication DAY!

The European-wide day for communicating about RAY and disseminating RAY research involves all 36 partners of the network in 34 countries as well as the European coordination.

What is this all about?

Carmen Teubl-Kiviniemi, RAY Network Coordination: ‘Enhancing the visibility of the RAY Network, its partners and activities as well as communicating and disseminating research findings and other Network endeavours are among the main objectives of the work done by the parties involved in the network, both on transnational and national levels. Bundling our efforts and strategically planning and implementing a common communication day for the network supports enhancing the visibility of the network on both European and national levels. Furthermore, it supports disseminating our findings and work to different stakeholders, e.g. with the intention to share the impact of the programmes to beneficiaries and the wider youth field and youth work sector. We hope that giving visibility to the findings can empower the quality planning and quality development of projects conducted within the programmes. Furthermore, we aim to encourage strategic planning of workplans and activities by National Agencies and beneficiaries using the findings and recommendations. And last but not least, our advocacy- and information-efforts for and with policy- and decision-makers are supported as well on this RAY Day.’

And what does RAY have to say about the European youth programmes?

Andreas Karsten, RAY Transnational Resarch Coordination: ‘At the core of our research methodology are biennial online surveys, to which all project participants and project team members of the European youth programmes are invited. Over the past 15+ years, more than 125.000 project participants and close to 30.000 project team members have participated in our surveys and given voice to their experience. These monitoring surveys are complemented by thematic research projects, which we use to drill deeper into specific aspects of the programmes with a mixed-method approach, combining qualitative research instruments (case studies, focus groups, interviews) with additional quantitative research instruments (usually small-scale thematic surveys).

Our research shows in many different ways that the European youth programmes work really well. They reach their intended objectives and empower young people as active citizens, critical thinkers and life-long learners. Secondly, our research frequently discovers aspects and areas for improvement, which helps National Agencies in finetuning the implementation of the European youth programmes, the SALTO centers in focusing their work in support of the programmes, and the European Commission in iterating the frameworks for the programmes’ implementation.’

Check out our Youth Research Dialogue and social media campaign TODAY

To celebrate the RAY Communication Day, we will live-stream an episode of the Youth Research Dialogues today at 15:00 CEST (more information here), and take a look back into the history of the RAY Network as well as share some research findings on RAY social media.