The Guidance Paper for Youth Participation aims at contributing to involve young people and youth organisations in the EU Danube Strategy. Thereby, the paper addresses two purposes:

(1) Providing guidance to youth initiatives and young people to pro-actively shape development in
the Danube Region;
(2) Starting a discussion in the EUSDR Governance and beyond on a long-term sustainable
perspective for the EU Strategy for the Danube Region (EUSDR).

Against this background, the paper defines major factors for successful youth participation. In the course of a multi-stage consultation process, stakeholders from the Danube Region identified needs and activities that are linked to the following factors to enhance youth participation:
§ Capacity building
§ Communication
§ Cooperation

For the sake of operationalisation, the Guidance Paper for Youth Participation provides a framework to structure and prioritise activities. In doing so, the framework should support stakeholders in the
capitalisation on existing initiatives, detecting “blind spots“ of youth participation, and generally develop activities to create a beneficial environment for youth participation.

The framework that is presented in the Guidance Paper for Youth Participation clusters activities
addressing capacity building, communication, and cooperation according to project ownership (bottom- up and top-down initiatives) and dimensions of youth participation (EUSDR Governance – cross border initiatives – local initiatives) in order to facilitate stakeholder mobilisation and define areas of intervention.