Our Head of Digital, Diana Ionita, participated in the first RAY Thematic Seminar, titled "How to use research data for programme implementation" which took place from June 11th to 13th, 2025, in Bratislava, Slovakia, together with NA representatives, researchers and other youth workers. This event was co-hosted by the National Agencies of the European Youth Programmes from Slovakia, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Finland, and Romania, with the coordination led by the RAY Network Coordination at the Finnish National Agency.
The seminar aimed to explore the integration of data and evidence-based research findings within European youth programmes, focusing on both practical and strategic approaches. The objectives included:
- Supporting National Agencies staff members in interpreting evidence-based data.
- Assisting beneficiaries in implementing projects and activities within the European youth programmes by making sense of research data.
- Exploring how to work with and utilize research effectively through data sense-making skills.
- Providing practical tools for data management.
- Exchanging knowledge and skills on existing practices.
- Enhancing the quality of projects implemented within the European youth programmes.
- Raising awareness of the open data portal developed by the RAY Network.
During the seminar, she had the opportunity to share one of the five good practices from the World Café session, specifically focusing on online focus groups. She emphasized the importance of adapting and reshaping research methods to the online environment, drawing on GEYC's previous experiences in organizing and facilitating online focus groups in partnership with UNICEF ECARO and the European Training Foundation (ETF). These online focus groups engaged youth from Europe and Central Asia to discuss four key topics: education, employment, mobility, and participation, providing in-depth ideas regarding the quantitative results obtained through online questionnaires. Moreover, she also built on our experience with organizing GEYC online consultations, through which we not only gathered quantitative and qualitative insights on our community members' experiences but also listened to their ideas, co-creating our Strategy for 2030.
The insights gained from this seminar will be used in building the capacity of our team and are closely aligned with our priorities at GEYC, as part of the system development & outreach activities of the project Erasmus+ Youth Accreditation / 2024-1-RO01-KA151-YOU-000208961.