How did the SALTO network come to life, and what does it actually do? SALTO network is a network of resource centres that support the implementation of Erasmus+ and the European Solidarity Corps (ESC) programmes. Here’s the story of how a small idea from 1999 became a key.
Picture this: It’s the late ‘90s, and the European Commission is constantly encouraging National Agencies to focus more on some things and pay extra attention to others. Every year, there’s a new European priority, and the national agencies (NA) across Europe are feeling the pressure to keep up.
Then, in 1999, in Austria, at a meeting of NAs implementing ‘Youth for Europe’ programme, someone throws out an idea: what if there was a European operational structure dedicated to trainings on priorities?
The Commission liked the sound of it. “Let’s give it a shot,” they said, and just like that – funding appeared.
Four youth NAs stepped up, applied to be training centres, and got the green light. The deal was simple: a half-time position and funding for two training courses. So, in the year 2000, four people were hired across Europe—one in Belgium, one in Germany, one in France, and one in the UK. They met once a month, figuring out how to make this thing work.
One Commission colleague, who loved big metaphors, EU abbreviations and action numbers, broke it down, explaining how this new initiative would support NAs, train youth workers, and help people develop skills in priority topics. They played around with the key words, shuffled some letters, and—hopla! —SALTO was born: Support and Advanced Learning and Training Opportunities for the YOUTH programme. That’s why the name SALTO-YOUTH stuck.
At first, SALTO was only supposed to organize two training courses a year—something useful for NAs to send participants to. Each NA took on a different focus.
In the UK, it was project management, though that later evolved into a focus on Cultural Diversity in response to the European Year Against Racism. In Germany, the big topic was preparing to work with pre-accession countries, as a dozen Central and Eastern European nations were getting ready to join the EU in 2004. This later grew into Training & Cooperation, which also brought in initiatives like Youthpass. In France, the priority was EuroMed youth cooperation (cooperation in youth projects including Southern Mediterranean countries), so they became SALTO EuroMed, while in Flanders, they organised a course on ‘Inclusion in the new European Voluntary Service’ and that’s how they became afterwards the SALTO on inclusion (no diversity yet).
Back then, everything was announced by fax (yes, really), including SALTO training courses and participant recruitments. SALTO covered all the costs—travel, hosting, trainers—so NAs wouldn’t have to worry about the budget. The idea was never to be a burden but rather to be the cherry on top of their work.
Before long, it became clear that SALTO could do even more by working closely with NAs and pooling resources. The demand for training kept growing—both from the Commission and the NAs themselves—so the SALTO network started expanding. In 2002, a resource centre for South-East Europe was set up in Slovenia. Two years later, since there were already centres for EuroMed and South-East Europe, a new one was created for Eastern Europe & Caucasus. Around the same time, an Information Resource Centre was launched, spread between Sweden and Hungary, managing youthnet—basically the Teams for NAs before Microsoft Teams even existed. Meanwhile, the French-speaking Belgian NA launched a resource centre for youth initiatives, which was later rebranded as SALTO Participation. In 2018, it moved to Estonia, and “Information” was added into the mix.
As EVS was taken out of the Youth in Action programme and put into the European Solidarity Corps (ESC), another SALTO was created in Austria to support it. Then, when Brexit loomed in 2018, the Cultural Diversity centre merged with Inclusion, and Flanders managed to hold onto it.
What started as a handful of people working part-time soon grew into bigger teams. SALTO family meetings, which had originally been a monthly affair, became an annual tradition—because even in a growing network, personal connections matter.
It turns out SALTO wasn’t just useful for the youth sector. The Education and Training sector took notice and decided they wanted in, too. In 2016, Hungary launched a resource centre for TCA (Training and Cooperation Activities) implementation. By 2022, an Inclusion & Diversity centre was created for the education and training sector in Croatia, followed by another in Finland focused on Digital Transformation. Estonia expanded its role with a cross-sectoral focus on Participation and Information, while France established another cross-sectoral centre—SALTO Green.
Today, SALTO is a family of 11 resource centres, each focusing on different priorities, regions, and programmes. What started as four people meeting in a room has become a Europe-wide network shaping the future of youth work, education and training, and beyond. And to think—it all started with a simple idea in Austria back in 1999.
