The Slovak and Dutch youth councils will join hands in a transnational project which aims to innovate and improve the consultation processes of the Structured Dialogue, both within their respective countries and throughout Europe. The project responds to the outcomes of the 4th Cycle of the Structured Dialogue on Youth by developing and sharing several consultation instruments that can be used by NWGs in order to increase the representativeness and inclusiveness of the consultations they conduct. Our belief is that that the employment of only one strategy (whether is it as a youth panel or another instrument) will not be sufficient and not desirable. Indeed, it is the combined or intertwined employment of different strategies that leads to a sufficient inclusiveness and representativeness of the consultation and the dialogue process and the outcomes/results that follow from it. To provide a transnationally tested ‘consultation toolbox’ that makes this possible, is not only quite ambitious, but also quite innovative in our view.The project is based on three pillars with corresponding objectives and project results:1. the development/design, the improvement, the testing and fine-tuning of an innovative set of six (proven successful) research/dialogue/consultation instruments that are:o increasing the inclusiveness and the representativeness of the SD-process (with a special focus on youngsters with fewer opportunities and/or in vulnerable positions)o of high quality, in their own and in their reciprocal applicationo inheritable by other NWG’s throughout Europe (for SD purposes and more generally)2. these (renewed) instruments will be brought together in a ‘consultation toolbox’ which will be shared with all kinds of relevant stakeholders within the respective countries and throughout Europe3. a transnational exchange-program of experiences and expertise focused on realising the first two pillars, powered by a close cooperation between the youth councils of Slovakia and the Netherlands. Besides the involved staff of the two youth councils the categories of participants who will (indirectly) benefit are threefold:· youngsters (but also experts and organisations) who will participate in the implementation/conduct of the consultation instruments: this will be around 2.750 youngsters, around 15 (professional) experts and around 15-25 educational institutes. Approximately 400-500 of them will be youngsters with fewer opportunities or in vulnerable positions· youngsters, experts and policymakers of other NWGs throughout Europe who will be actively informed (and where possible instructed) with regard to the adoption of the toolbox: this will be around 75 participants· facilitators and trainers (within Slovakia and the Netherlands) who will support the implementation of the instruments: this will be around 10 participants. We will set up and organise all kinds of activities with corresponding methodologies. This is structured around 4 seminars and all kinds of exchanging activities that are necessary to achieve the intended results. The core of our program is that we will improve existing consultation instruments (broad quantitative youth panels and methods to distribute questionnaires on the one hand, and the improvement of qualitative instruments like focus groups on the other) and we will design new ones (regional youth panels (partly) focusing on youngsters with fewer opportunities, and dynamic dialogue programmes within youth care institutes). During the project these (renewed) instruments will be brought together in a ‘consultation toolbox’ which will be shared with all kinds of relevant stakeholders within the respective countries and throughout Europe.The project will gain all kinds of impact and benefits, on the short and longer term. It increases the quality of the Structured Dialogue in the respective countries, but because of the structure/inheritable nature of the ‘SD Consultation Toolbox’ and our dissemination plan to launch it, we also expect to support other NWGs to adopt aspects of our outputs and thereby increasing the quality of their consultation activities. During the project, we will involve and empower all kinds of youngsters to give their input in a way that suits them and cooperate with policy makers and professionals to make sure this input resounds in (youth) policy. This is particularly important for those youngsters who have fewer opportunities or who grow up in a vulnerable position. We will describe and test the underlying mechanisms for successfully involving youngsters. Within our respective organisations, we will ensure that there is sufficient knowledge and capacity to provide relevant information to organisations that may approach us after the project formally ended. Furthermore, we will actively work together with the European Steering Comity / the trio-presidency that will succeed our own current presidency.