The European Platform for Youth Development (EPYD) is a non-governmental, non-profit, apolitical body based on regional cooperation between the European Union and partner countries from SEE & Caucasus created in 2005 (It was juridical set up in 2007).
European Platform for Youth Development (EPYD) is the fruitful outcome of the project Networking 4 Tomorrow that came as follow up to sequential programmes developed by "Youngsters Without Borders" in the EU and partner countries since 2003.
EPYD as a network is formed by 14 organizations from SEE, Caucasus and EU countries: Azerbaijan, Georgia, Denmark, Greece, Italy, Malta, Poland, Spain, Albania, Croatia, Macedonia, Romania, Serbia and Turkey.
EPYD's mission is to increase the quality & accountability, support the development, lobby for the recognition, and advocate the active participation of organizations working in the youth field.
EPYD has emerged as an innovative tool to work on the lack of recognition and validation of youth work, poor quality of international youth projects and scarcity of capacity building and sustainable development in the youth field. EPYD is to counteract the major lack of structural or policy impact on the youth field due to the low level of involvement of local, regional and national authorities in the support of youth actions that hampers any sort of long term development.
EPYD works on the recognition and validation of youth work in order to increase the employability of young people and to promote the YOUTH WORKER PORTAFOLIO, EUROPASS or any other European Initiatives.
In general terms of motivation the current project, its activities but furthermore its follow-up will contribute to the effort of the Commission to increase the quality of the Youth in Action Programme in the neighbouring regions.
In terms of capacity EPYD network is formed by a variety of non governmental organizations, with long and rich experience in EVS project management but also in implementation of projects within YiA programme as well as other funding programmes. Further more the formal structure of EPYD, soon to become also a legal based European organization has received the open support for its future actions from European Institutions after a lobbying strategy which consisted in several meetings of representatives from EPYD with decision making and programme directors from the Executive Agency, Youth Forum and Diplomatic Missions.

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