What we do

• Youth and child participation, democracy and active citizenship

  Participation only counts when it changes something. PILCROW builds the structures, skills and relationships that let young people and children influence real decisions, in their schools, their municipalities and at European level.

• Equality, inclusion, social rights and non-discrimination

  Inclusion fails when it stops at being present. We work on the practices, tools and rights-based frameworks that turn diversity into genuine influence, and we name discrimination where it persists.

• Well-being, mental health, resilience and safeguarding

  Around nine million adolescents in Europe live with a mental health condition. We help youth organisations move from awareness to structured practice, and we build safeguarding into everything we run.

• Sustainability, climate action and green skills

  Climate action needs more than awareness. We connect environmental education with practical resilience, and vocational training with the skills the green economy is actually asking for.

• Skills, innovation and digital citizenship

  Technology is neither neutral nor automatically inclusive. We build digital tools that extend rights and participation, and we equip young people to think critically about the systems around them.

• Mobility, volunteering and intercultural learning

  Mobility works when it is prepared, inclusive and followed up. We design exchanges, training and volunteering that reach young people who would not otherwise travel, and that leave something behind.

What this looks like in practice

Since 2020 PILCROW has delivered thirteen European projects, six of them as coordinator. The work is concrete: tools that get used, curricula that get taught, and rooms where young people and decision-makers are actually in the same conversation.

• Digital tools built to be used after the funding ends: a multilingual AI assistant that helps Roma communities report discrimination and generates complaint forms adapted to each national legal framework; an Inclusion Index Calculator for youth organisations; a quiet-quitting risk scanner for youth workers. All released open access.
• Curricula and handbooks: a VET curriculum bridging vocational training and the green sector, a mental health good practices handbook, an e-learning course on climate resilience, and a storytelling toolkit against stereotypes.
• Policy work that reaches the room: Civic Incubator Labs and Competitiveness Dialogues feeding a Youth Strategy Paper on EU competitiveness, five national child participation plans for local administrations, and Policy Labs where young people sit with decision-makers rather than presenting to them.
• Mobility we run ourselves: five youth exchanges and one youth worker training course coordinated by PILCROW, consistently reserving places for participants facing geographical, economic or social barriers.
• Delivery in Spain for partners who need it: national focus groups, pilots, workshops, local events and stakeholder engagement, with working relationships in Valencian municipalities, schools and vocational training centres.

The record

• 13 projects funded under Erasmus+ and CERV since 2020.
• 6 coordinated by PILCROW, 7 as a consortium partner.
• 63 partner organisations across 20 countries.
• Accountable to five national agencies: Spain (INJUVE), Croatia (AMPEU), Germany (JUGEND für Europa), Poland (FRSE) and Iceland (Landskrifstofa Erasmus+).
• Erasmus+ KA152, KA153, KA154, KA210 and KA220, and CERV project grants and lump sum grants.
• Member of the I-STEP Network, CONNECT International, the QUEST Network and the NatureFriends Network.

How we work with partners

We take work packages we can deliver and say no to the ones we cannot. We produce in English and Spanish as a matter of course. We build safeguarding into activity design rather than adding it to the annex. And we report on time, because the coordinator carrying the reporting deadline should not also be chasing us.

Partner with us

Cross-cutting approaches

These run through every area rather than sitting inside one of them.

• Non-formal education
• Participation and co-creation
• Accessibility and inclusion
• Gender equality
• Safeguarding
• Capacity building
• Transnational learning and exchange
• Community action
• Policy dialogue
• Monitoring, evaluation and learning