<< Objectives >>The main reason why our partners and us decided to develop the idea behind this project is the need, jointly recognized by all of us, to provide youth workers (our staff members, active members and collaborators) with innovative methods based on experiential learning to be used to fight increasing social distancing, division and lack of awareness and knowledge about relevant issues in society between young people.The issues and needs that we are addressing through this project are: the need for youth workers to increase their capacities in fostering involvement of young people in understanding the complexity and human, social, economical interconnectedness of the issues affecting communities they live; the need for young people to become more aware of diversity surrounding them; the issue (preexisting but even more enhanced by the current pandemic of covid-19) of social distancing on the basis of ethnicity, material status, legal status and many other elements of identity that enforce segregation with its negative effects on the people and communities affected; the high potential but insufficient role of youth organizations and organizations working with youth in acting as a platform for interaction, mutual learning and understanding between young people from different groups as well as between young people and other groups in society.The concept developed by this project is to train youth workers to become able to involve young people as creators, guides and developers of educational walking tours which aim to explore different realities of a place and to tell alternative stories about it, having other young people as the main target group. This international training course is aimed at enabling youth workers to train their peers, colleagues and young people in their cities/towns to become volunteer guides for educational walking tours which aim to explore different realities of a place and to tell alternative stories about it.Specific objectives are: Support the involved organizations in creating educational walking tours that can introduce resident and visitors to relevant places and issues through first-hand contact and experience, in order to increase their knowledge and understanding of a certain places’ history, culture and current issues; train participants in becoming multipliers (training others in their communities and organizations) of educational walking tours methodology; create at least one itinerary of an educational walking route per partner organization.Beside ethnic divisions, another aspect we are aiming at exploring are urban phenomena whose relevance is increasing in all the involved cities: homelessness, forced evictions, gentrification, excessive construction and urbanization in spite of the environment, so that young people can get (an be involved in researching) a bigger picture of what is happening just a few blocks away from their homes and local media/mainstream narration do not cover enough.Finally, another aspect we want to give voice to with this project is the promotion of bottom-up, resilient practices of active citizenship and participation taking place in the involved cities: Permaculture gardens and urban gardens, solidarity initiatives, platforms supporting human rights or strengthening community ties, stories of individuals making the difference.Beside exploring the present, one important element of this project is the awareness of the past. Due to the recent history of many of the involved countries (Balkan wars are the most emblematic example), nowadays young people (especially those born in the early 2000’s) do not have the opportunity to learn about recent history, which is mainly absent from school books, a taboo for many families, manipulated by the governmental media. One of the many roles of youth workers and organizations in such contexts is to encourage young people to search for alternative interpretations from mainstream narrations as well as create their own opinion on the basis of information available to them and what they can actually research, learn,discover and find out.<< Implementation >>We implemented a 6-working days Training course in Novi Sad, between 4th and 11th October 2021.The training involved also two pilot walking tours held by locals (a third one was planned, but the organizers was infected with covid-19 and the tour was canceled).After that participants held follow-up training and info-sessions for their peers in their organizations/collectives as well as at least one pilot educational walking tour per participant and/or city in their home cities and countries: Berlin, Vienna, Pančevo, Prishtina, Novi Sad, Sarajevo, Mostar, Istanbul, Ankara, Tirana, Zagreb.Finally, a publication on educational walking tours to explore alternative realities was created using inputs and tools from the TC as well as from the participants' direct experiences and the routes they created in their cities. At the local level, beside follow-up sessions/training and pilot tours, participants also promoted the walking tours to their target groups (young people, youth workers, local citizens) both offline and online, through their CSOs and the CSOs they cooperate with at the local level, and the web.In the TC, participants were youth workers, active members and volunteers of civil society organizations coming from Serbia, Kosovo*, Albania, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Turkey, Germany and Austria.Participants to the TC were 21, distributed as follows, according to the agreement made with partners: Serbia: 6 participants, 2 staff members (1 trainer, 1 logistical manager), Kosovo* : 3 + 1 staff member (trainer), Germany: 2, Albania: 3, Croatia: 1, Bosnia and Herzegovina: 3, Austria: 1, Turkey: 2.The number greatly changed from the expected one due to the fact that the TC was largely delayed due to covid-19 and was implemented in a period when still many people were afraid of traveling, could not travel due to being infected/their families or friends being infected, and some of the partners had too many ongoing calls to send participants at all (the Slovenian and Montenegrian partner) or more participants than agreed (partners from Croatia, Austria), which was partially solved involving more participants from certain countries, ie. Albania, Kosovo* and Serbia.The group of participants was really diverse, in terms of age but also background: the participants from Kosovo*, Turkey, Albania, Germany, Croatia, two participants from Bosnia and Herzegovina and three from Serbia are volunteers in the partner organizations and/or other local CSOs, while the Austrian participant, two participants from Serbia and one from Bosnia and Herzegovina are professional youth workers and/or employed by the partner organizations or other CSOs.Two out of the Serbian participants are actually two international long-term volunteers who back then had just started their volunteering service at VCV.Two participants from Kosovo* and one participants from Turkey can be clearly defined as participants with fewer opportunities. The Turkish participants is a non-binary person (using the pronoun “they/them”) and member of a LGBT+ students’ collective and due to their identity they experience different forms of discrimination (which is also the reason behind their walking tour which is about welcoming LGBT+ students at Middle East Technical University). Two participants from Kosovo*, who are twin brothers, clearly have educational difficulties and can speak no foreign language, will not continue their education after high school and have very little personal and professional perspectives whatsoever, due to the fact that they are born and raised in a small town in Kosovo* in the aftermaths of the war, have no passport and never traveled, and have an extremely reduced cultural life, while being members of Young Active Gračanica seems to be among the few factors of protection.The diversity of the group was a challenge but also an asset: the younger participants were 18 while the oldest was 50 years old, and three participants had serious challenges with the English language (from Kosovo*,Turkey). The trainers made it possible for the diversities also in terms of background, opinions and identity, but also volunteering/professional backgrounds to become an asset through the implementation of activities where everyone could give their contribution, opinion, experience and which served as a preparation to understand different audiences of educational walking tours themselves.Moreover, participants brought their interests, skills, professions (we had a professional tourist guide, a marketing specialist, a permaculture designer, a licensed youth worker, a psychologist and charity worker..) which being so diverse but complementary when it came to the design of the tours made the process of creating the tours more complete and engaging.When it comes to the tours in their cities, participants were young people (most cases), young people and children (Turkey), youth workers (Austria), all interested locals (Serbia, Pančevo).<< Results >>The main outputs of the project are 10 different itineraries for educational walking tours in 10 different cities: Novi Sad, Gračanica, Istanbul, Ankara, Pančevo, Vrnjačka Banja, Sarajevo, Zagreb, Vienna, Tirana and Mostar as well as the final publication that can be used by youth workers to develop educational walking tours in their cities together with young people they work with.Most participants in the residential international training acquired competencies that enabled them to create educational walking tours that tell alternative stories of their communities as wellas train young people with whom they work to do the same. A minor part of participants (two from Kosovo*, one from Turkey) couldn’t acquire the above mentioned competencies as they came with a background which was less favorable than other participants’: for them, it was the first international experience and they firstly had to deal with linguistic challenges, cultural shock, fully understanding the extent to which their contribution/participation is expected, and then just later in the second half of the TC were able to attend fully, thanks to translations provided from and to Serbian, Turkish and English. For them, we can speak about the development of intercultural awareness, sense of initiative, higher understanding of diversity in the region/Europe as well as awareness in a variety of topics which are encompassed in the tours created by the other participants and which samples they could experience online during the TC, but their still limited awareness of their own local contexts is still too limited to create proper walking tours with an educational element.Participants to the one day trainings held by the participants in their local communities (their colleagues, fellow volunteers and activists) acquired basic knowledge about the concept of educational walking tours, could improve their attitude and understanding of the need to tell alternative stories in the frame of the specific context of their city as well as Europe; practical skills in guiding small groups of young people through the previously created routes, information about the partner organizations involved in the project as well as the variety of tours designed/organized by participants.Beside participants of the TC and their peers, the project also had an impact on the participants of their local walking tours which they implemented after the TC. The topics of the walking tours organized by participants in their communities were:Permaculture (Mostar, Bosnia and Herzegovina)Street art as a tool for social awareness (two different tours, Pančevo and Novi Sad, Serbia)Air pollution (Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina)Intercultural heritage (two different tours, Prishtina, Kosovo* and Istanbul,Turkey)History of queer presence and activism in Middle East Technical University (Ankara, Turkey)Public parks as spaces for youth work (Vienna, Austria))Meditation and de-stressing techniques in the forest (Berlin, Germany)Old villas transformed into modern spots (Tirana, Albania)Craftsmanship and low-waste lifestyles (Zagreb, Croatia)Participants to the walking tours were local young people, but also locals of any age and, in one case, youth and children in foster care, while the tour in Vienna was dedicated to local youth workers.All participants got acquainted with this methodology, the specific topic(s) of their walk as well as participated in the tours with locals they often hadn’t met before and with whom they had the chance to share talks about their cities, communities and the problems affecting them.Impact on the regional level is mainly represented by the participation of a big number of partners coming from the Western Balkans and countries neighbouring the Western Balkans, while the international impact of this project is mainly based on its visibility and dissemination: the guidelines which resulted as an output of this project are now available to organizations in the participating countries, Europe and beyond. Additionally, the fact that all partners are branches or contact points of the SCI movement makes the impact even stronger, as replication of this project within the SCI will be encouraged and the guidelines were shared with all 43 SCI branches and its many more members in Europe and worldwide.