RAY TRIANGULAR SUMMIT

Practice, Policy and Research in Dialogue

CONTEXT

The RAY Triangular Summit took place in Dublin, Ireland, from 21-23 October 2026. The Summit brought 175 participants, 28 national delegations and more than 25 European stakeholders from the fields of practice, policy and research together, to explore and discuss most recent RAY research findings and essential insights from other European studies related to youth.

The event was co-hosted by the National Agencies of the European Youth Programmes from Ireland (Host) & Finland (RAY) and Austria, Belgium (Flemish Community), Czechia, Denmark, Hungary, Italy, Poland, Romania, Spain (Co-hosts). The RAY Network Coordination (at the Finnish National Agency) led and coordinated the preparation process and the implementation of the conference in cooperation with the RAY transnational research team.

AIMS

We fostered an informed discourse between stakeholders from different fields and explored how evidence-based research can contribute to the further development of the current and upcoming generation of the European youth programmes, as well as European youth policy strategies and frameworks. Finally, this event aimed to illustrate the impact and showcase the outcomes of the European youth programmes.

PROGRAMME

The programme included a welcoming by Aidan Farrelly (Member of Irish Parliament, Spokesperson on Children, Equality and Youth) as well as by the organizers (Suzanne Kavanagh, Acting Head of Youth, ESC and Sport, Léargas & Carmen Teubl-Kiviniemi, RAY Network Manager).

Andreas Karsten (RAY transnational research coordinator) gave two inputs on the key findings from RAY: One one what is working well in the European Youth Programmes and one on the challenges and shortcomings of the programmes.

These were followed by two panel discussions:

A youth panel with five young panelists coming from different European countries, representing various roles in national decision-making (Makbule Temel, ESC ambassador, AT; Wendla Schaper, German NA Youth Advisory Board, DE; Emma van Straten, Dutch Youth Council, NL; Ángel Pérez Contreras, Spanish Youth Council, ES; Raphael Olympio, artist, creative practitioner, IE).

A policy panel with five European policy and decision makers representing different institutions in the youth field (Aisling Maloney, Board member, European Youth Forum; Marcos Ros Sempere, Member of European Parliament, Spain; Jadranka Vukovic Johnsson, Senior Expert – Youth policy, European Commission, Directorate-General for Education, Youth, Sport and Culture; Tobias Flessenkemper, Head of the Youth Department, Directorate for Democracy, Council of Europe; Aidan Farrelly, Member of Irish Parliament, Spokesperson on Children, Equality and Youth).

The programme also included discussion groups to dive deeper into evidence-based reflections and exchanges regarding the future of European Youth Programme and EU Youth Strategy. The themes of these discussion groups were related to some of the challenges:

Youth Participation and Democracy
Diversity and Inclusion of Participants
Safety of Young People
Supporting Current and Potential Beneficiaries
Access, Recognition and Quality of Youth Work

In the groups, it was discussed how policy, practice, research (in national and European contexts) should respond to these challenges and ideas and first recommendations for the future European Youth Programme and EU Youth Strategy were explored.

Stakeholder groups and national delegations also had time to reflect on the sessions as well as to explore first takeaways and to discuss next steps for their contexts.

The official programme concluded with a musical recap of the Summit by Raphael Olympio and was followed by youth-led walking tours of inner-city Dublin. The tours were co-designed and delivered by young people from the inner-city Youth Services that are part of Erasmus+ projects, showcasing local spaces, landmarks, street art, and community life through their own lived experience and perspectives.

OUTCOMES

We will publish a conference report by the end of November.
We will produce a short key messages document with most important insights and recommendations from the Summit. This will be available by the end of November as well.

LIVE STREAM SESSIONS

If you are curious for more: during the RAY Triangular Summit, we livestreamed four sessions. More information on the live streamed sessions can be found here.

CONTEXT

In 2008, the RAY Network was founded with the aim to contribute to quality assurance and quality development in the implementation of the European Union’s Youth in Action Programme (2007–2013). To that end, the initial network partners developed a framework for the first and core research project of the network: standard surveys for project participants and project teams. These standard surveys were further developed at the start of the next programme generation, Erasmus+ Youth in Action (2014–2020), resulting in this core research project on the research-based analysis and monitoring of Erasmus+ Youth in Action (RAY MON), and subsequently to the research-based analysis and monitoring of the European Solidarity Corps (RAY SOC). The monitoring surveys are still the core research undertaken in the RAY Network, they were further developed in the ongoing programme generation (2021-2027) and are conducted and implemented in cooperation with currently all 34 RAY partner countries.

Over the past 15+ years, more than 125.000 project participants and close to 30.000 project team members have participated in the surveys and given voice to their experience. These monitoring surveys are complemented by thematic research projects, which RAY uses to dive 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).

The 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, the 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.

The RAY Network is currently running the second survey cycle in the ongoing programme period. The surveys have been launched in autumn 2025 and key insights and findings will be communicated throughout 2026, with the RAY Triangular Summit as main space for disseminating and discussing newest findings.