The first online event for policymakers was organized by the COORDINATE project on 25th November 2021. All project partners invited their key national and European policymakers as well as relevant stakeholders in the field of longitudinal studies and/or children and young person's wellbeing.
Policymakers are an important group of stakeholders who will be actively involved throughout the project. Prior to the event, the partners identified policymakers who could benefit from GUIDE /EuroCohort in terms of policy insights contained in the research findings or gained through direct use of the data. In addition, the event was also intended for representatives of funding agencies, public or private institutional investors and other organizations that invest in childand adolescent well-being projects or longitudinal studies in general.
An online event was organized to publicize the existence of COORDINATE and to engage policy makers from the beginning of the project to ensure effective knowledge mobilization. The event highlighted the need for an evidence-based approach to policy making to improve child well-being. It also sought to obtain feedback from policy makers on the project, its purpose and the best channels to expand the community and ensure its sustainability.
The program for this event was entitled Growing Up in Digital Europe: building the bridge between policy makers and longitudinal data and was divided into two parts. In the first part there were 3 presentations. At the beginning, the project coordinators Gary Pollock and Jennifer Symonds gave a short welcome and introduction to Growing Up In Digital Europe (GUIDE). Jessica Ozan presented Delphi survey, youth advisory boards and questionnaire working committee. A brief overview of the topics covered in the first wave of the questionnaire was given by Toni Babarović. After a short break, participants chose between three breakout rooms with smaller group discussionsons and different focuses:
Childhood and schooling,
infant and early development and
parent and parenting.
Attendance was relatively high with representatives from all partner countries. Overall, the immediate feedback for the presentation part of the event was extremely positive. Participants who attended the interactive sessions engaged in group discussions and pointed out some useful and interesting points in the facilitated discussions.
Since there was a lot of interest from policy makers but they were not available for the November event as their schedules were already quite full, the COORDINATE consortium has decided to organize a follow-up event with a similar program.