In June 2026, the Youth Advisory Group (YAG) came together for another inspiring session, with youth advisors joining from Italy, Ireland, Germany, Estonia, and the UK. They were joined by three brilliant guest speakers:

Anastasia Galkina shared her experience volunteering at @ease in the Netherlands; a walk-in centre offering peer-to-peer mental health support for young people aged 12-25. She also spoke about the YOUTHreach Mental Healthcare Advisory Group’s (MAG) work mapping pathways to youth mental health care across Europe, to understand where gaps exist and where our interventions can make the biggest impact.

YAG member Alessandra Soto Ruiz presented on the co-created outcome measure developed with researchers at the University of Birmingham for the YOUTHreach project. She also shared her own journey of development, from YAG member to interning on Horizon Europe and EU-funded programmes. An inspiring example of the doors that open through involvement in research!

Dr Rebekah Amos gave an update on our systems mapping work and introduced us to her Fellowship plans to improve mental health support for minoritised young people in secondary schools. She highlighted that when marginalised groups are underrepresented in research, inequality becomes invisible, and that’s something we want to change.