Don Bosco Youth-Net was created in 2001 to offer educational opportunities for Don Bosco youth in the growing EU. But Europe and its young people have changed strongly since then. In order to address these changes, DBYN organise a strategic network meeting 16-19 March 2017 at the Salesianum in Munich.
 
During the first day of work, representatives of member organisations were divided over 4 thematic working groups: Participation & Impact, Education, Representation and Spirituality. The working groups focused on bringing a new clarity on the needs of our member organisations and its youth. The outcomes fed into the annual meeting of DBYN’s General Executive Body. This is the main statutory meeting of the network, which apart from adopting the annual reports, started the development of a new strategic plan for 2018-2020 and a new work plan for the coming year.
 
DBYN also elected a new leadership. The network voted Aktionszentrum Benediktbeuern from Germany, Salesians of Austria, SPYS Malta and The Salesian Youth ministry office of Great-Britain as new members for the Administrative Body. They are responsible for the operational follow-up of the network. Fonny Grootjans was elected as a new president, who is taking over the presidency of Francesco Bagiolini.

​13 to 16 October DBYN held a network meeting in Turin. Our hosts of Turismo Giovanile Sociale arranged accommodation at SERMIG  - Arsenale della Pace, close to Valdocco. The focus of the meeting was initiating a strategic reform process, which will run through the year 2017. The main aim is to bring DBYN close to the needs of current generation of young Europeans. We could also welcome Lithuanian and Albanian guests from the Don Bosco centres in Vilnius and Skhoder. They could experience how the governance of our network works, get to know the different member organisations and reflect on possible future cooperation.

After almost 8 years, DBYN is soon to release its new website. The previous website was developed in a time when social networking and other web 2.0 applications were in full development. In this time we worked together with a Belgian youth work organisation, specialised in web development for the youth work sector. We were ambitious, integrating many web 2.0 applications allowing us to make simple mash-ups and personalized mailing lists. However, we were surpassed by the rapid development of the internet itself. Many of the functionalities of our website, were soon taken over by Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and Google apps.

Since 2012 DBYN started to develop dedicated project websites.  First with web-application EDICY, but when this European platform changed their business plan, we moved to the WEEBLY platform. After a few years of experience with project websites, we decided to transfer also our homepage to this platform.