"The statistics show that only 22% of Europeans aged over 15 are engaged with volunteering activities. There are still lots of people that dont understand the importance of voluntarism and its endless benefits both for the volunteers and for communities. With this project we seek to promote volunteering, to empower youth to take an active role in their society and increase their sense of belonging to local community, as well as bring together young people from different areas of Europe with high/medium/low percentage of people's engagment with voluntarism for exchanging good practices. One of the challenges that people find in volunteering is lack of information (where, what, how and why), therefore in cooperation of 10 partners we will create an informative brochure giving details on volunteering possibilities in our countries and possibilities within ERASMUS+ programme. ""The science of Boomerang"" seeks for visible and long-term results on regional and European level in attempt to fight youth unemployment trough gaining certain sought by employers qualifications and experiencing volunteering activities. Our youth exchange is a tool that will change and re-shape the perceptions of the young multipliers that will take part in order to improve the access and participation rates of young people in volunteering projects and community programs. We strongly believe that this youth exchange will help us to reach more people with the main message that volunteering is a great way to get work experience, broaden your perspectives, train 'soft skills', enlarge contacts and build proffessional network, increase self-confidence - all leading to finding employment and having stronger position on labour market.This youth exchange is designed for active youngsters that want to make a change in their society, who are interested in the topic of volunteering and who are motivated to gain new skills and competences. The youth exchange ""The science of Boomerang"" will gather 51 participants from Estonia, Portugal, Macedonia, Poland, Lithuania, Austria, Germany, Hungary, Slovenia and Turkey. The project will be carried out in the city of Tallinn in the middle of September. We will introduce participants to the context of active volunteering, together we wil try to find new creative ways of promoting volunteering, we will identify direct connection between voluntarism and employment and we will exchange the realities from our societies. Whole concept is fully based around the principle of non-formal learning (round-tables, sharing and exchanging opinions, team buildings, case studies, thematic workshops, group discussions, etc) and learning-by-doing. The methods will be used in an interactive way to have a long-lasting effect on remembrance. Basics of Erasmus+ programme and concept of Youthpass with its key competences will be promoted throughout the project. By the end of the youth exchange we will organise a big volunteering event that will be done in collaboration with local organisations and istitutions for getting real volunteering experience, local youth will have a chance to join our activities on this day and have a group discussion with foreigners why it is important to volunteer and how we can engage more yongsters with it. We expect that participants will improve life-long learning competencies that are important for their professional development: communication in mother and foreign languages, civic skills, cultural awareness and expression, interest to engage in communities and networks for cultural, social or professional purposes. Youngsters will break the stereotypes among each other and will improve their sensitivity and solidarity. This project will give the young participants an opportunity to organize informal activities for their peers and local community and to be active citizens through volunteering. The skills learned in this youth exchange are not only applicable just to unemployment but can be expanded to form a broader base for life learning experiences. These long term, synergistic benefits will help to propel forward a more inclusive and better attitude towards active citizen participation throughout Europe and the surrounding countries."

“Game in” is a 7-day training course organized in cooperation of 8 partners, which took place in Tallinn, Estonia, on 14-20 March 2016. This project involved 24 youth workers from different youth sectors coming from Estonia, Italy, Lithuania, Slovenia, Spain, Macedonia, Poland and Romania. The main aim of the project was to discover the play element as an educational tool that can be used by youth workers and youth leaders for higher youth inclusion and bigger interest by the target groups. The target group of this project was people that are directly involved in working with youth: facilitators, teachers, youth leaders and youth workers. 24 participants had the opportunity to explore the game as a powerful tool of working with young people as well as to share and reflect about their experience and working methods. Specific objectives of this training course were to foster youth workers on using games as tool for participation, to provide a space for cooperation, to share knowledge and experiences between participants working directly with youngsters, to clarify the learning dimension through games, support initiative spirit of youth, propose and create new methods in order to support intercultural learning and European citizenship through games, as well as familiarize the participants with the issues of animation in social life, education and youth work. Participants have developed competencies in alternative methods for working with their target groups – games for increasing the quality of their intervention in their communities that can empower inclusion of young people. Whole training course was based on non-formal education methods with theoretical and practical inputs. Activities included a very good overview and practical experience of these methods through individual work, working groups and collective group work. Each participant has worked through fresh ideas about how to use these tools in their future actions. As part of dissemination activities each partner had a special task. Most of the partners managed to implement games about Erasmus+ created during the project in their local communities, which was useful for practicing gained skills and promoting Erasmus+ programme. Moreover, each partner has promoted this project on their social platforms ensuring high visibility and increasing interest of readers.

Secret Library: Chapter 2 is a follow up youth exchange that pursues the goal of making national legends more valuable among the modern technical-minded society. Every country has its own so-named stories, eposes, that, basically, describe national history in some kind of artistic way. That means it indeed is a good possibility for one to immerse into a completely unknown origin without the necessity of reading traditional info-sources. But, unfortunately, modern generations, especially young people, tend to forget these simple basics.Secret Library: Chapter 2 will take place in the Palmse, Estonia, in the period of 05-12 October 2016. Youngsters from Estonia, Macedonia, Lithuania, Romania, Spain, Austria, Poland, Portugal and Slovakia - who lack international experience and are eager for new discoveries will spend some time together trying to get to know other cultures through long forgotten way - storytelling. Project mixes different type of people, starting off with those, who have zero previous experience, and those, who have already gotten a chance to participate in such events, with youngsters who have some kind of cultural difficulties. This atmosphere should underline one of the very main principles of European Unity, which is equality among the people. Project diminishes passive listening and boredom by itself, due to the programme saturated with all kinds of activities that imply interaction with others. Group discussions, workshops, simulation exercises and role plays should bring communication and collaboration to the completely different level.With all the stories presented by participants we will be able to organize a big storytelling event with the great impact on local people in order to disseminate the outcomes of our non-formal and informal education. It will consist of set of legends to introduce every participating country and the very special final legend that includes elements of all the previous ones. As a concluding part, we will promote Erasmus+ programme through the presentation, its priorities and objectives, to inspire guests and spread the word among the people.All things considered, this youth exchange provides a ground needed for people to meet each other, heavily increase knowledge about European Union and its structure as well as improve own skills and overcome fears for better employability in the future.

"""Beyond the impossible"" is a 8-day training course organized in cooperation of 7 partners, which took place in Wroclaw, Poland, on 28,03-04.04.2016. 21 youth workers coming from Poland, Macedonia, Estonia, Lithuania, Romania, Hungary and Spain got the chance to improve their facilitating skills and gain new, innovative ones. The target group of this project were young people 18-30 years old with a strong motivation and interest to gain new knowledge in order to organise activities in their home countries. The idea of this project appeared in discussions between partners, that a lot of active youngsters are in need of being empowered in order to organise or lead any kind of project. The main objective was to help young people to develop practical soft skills, to improve self-confidence and self-esteem, which can enable the participants to completely plan, run, and evaluate local, national and international projects. During 8 days participants got to know what facilitation is, learnt to design and develop workshops in order to meet the desired outcome, received knowledge about facilitation techniques and methods, understood group interaction and dynamics. Working schedule was based on non-formal and informal methods, including different workshops on facilitation skills, simulations exercises, group work, intercultural activities, round-table discussions, all stimulating active participation, creativity and self-confidence. This training course became a small step of improval the quality of facilitation across Europe, as well contributed to creation of new projects on similar topic. Being included in every stage of the project, partner organizations developped their organizational and coordination skills, increased their capacity level to create and lead different educational activities."