Today’s Europe needs campaigns and actions fostering solidarity and peace education, which prevent the violent radicalisation of young people and strengthen mutual respect, understanding, and harmony between people of all backgrounds. “Compassion in Action” is a 7-day-training course that gathered 32 youth workers, facilitators, educators and community leaders from Austria, Bulgaria, Croatia, Estonia, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Macedonia, Malta, Poland, Portugal and Turkey in Payerbach, Austria (January 22nd - 30th of 2019) with the aim to introduce participants with new tools and strategies to respond to the challenges of social issues effectively and with compassion, thus improving quality of youth work and building communities based on empathy and wellbeing. The following objectives have been outlined: 1) to create a foundation to build more caring, supportive and peaceful communities by developing the attitudes of empathy, compassion and solidarity in youth work 2) To support professional development of youth workers and improve the quality of youth work across Europe. In order to reach this objective, we will introduce youth workers with tools and strategies to effectively respond to the challenges of social issues in European youth work, especially concerning radicalization of youth and youth groups. This project will also create space to develop shared understanding to bring more trust, support and cooperation in local solidarity work, thus strengthening mutual support networks of individuals and organisations. 3) To facilitate personal development of the participants and their target groups. This project will provide a background for participants to develop their self-awareness, empathic communication and leadership skills well as understanding how wellbeing impacts the resilience and empowerment of youth, educators and organisations strengthening their ability to face the challenges emerging in their local communities. Participants will have a chance to experience these benefits for their own development and learn how to provide similar experience to young people and other youth workers 4) To provide impulse, know-how and networks for their organizations to create high impact activities. We believe that people and their choices are in the centre of every story of successful organization. Thus we explicitly work with enhancing skills of young people and creating opportunities for networking and further cooperation development whether in form of projects, knowledge exchange or mutual online support. With this course we would like to contribute to the improvement of professional competences of youth workers and educators, as well as improving youth workers and educators' compassionate leadership skills and abilities to make better connections with participants of their activities, with their colleagues and communities. Participants learned new methodologies based on work with body and movement, improved their toolkit with new approaches and at the same time enhanced their social and civic skills. Participants improved their leadership and teamwork skills, communication skills, including assertive and empathic communication, networking skills, ability to empathize and resolve conflicts, will learn how to inspire positive action, gain support of other people and institutions to their initiatives. Through dialogue, group and self-reflection, mindfulness, theater, voice work, bodywork, movement, dance and meditation participants learned from each other, develop the connection and open communication within the group. Our methodology is based on experiential learning, interdisciplinary exchange, embodied learning and non-formal education principles. Participants learned through testing their designed methods and reflecting upon the experience. With the new knowledge participants are able to suggest their organizations and target groups practices that help to build healthier, supportive and peaceful working environments and communities that foster innovation, inclusion and dialogue. As leaders, employees, or volunteers of partner organizations they are able to design new services, learning programs for young people, to facilitate learning process of others in a responsible, compassionate and efficient manner, which in turn will result in high quality innovative programs for youth in Europe. We hope that there will be more conversations around wellbeing, emotions, needs and compassion in youth work within these organizations and beyond. Since in order to create a strong civil society, we need organizations that are inclusive, resilient and able to welcome all kinds of people, offer them space to be understood, listened to and accepted. So that they are choosing democratic values over nationalism and radicalism.DAILY GRAPHIC HARVESTING: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1vmL6x5e5X1Zzy4Q1haWGbTUQE21v3pYpBLOG BY PARTICIPANTS: https://compassioninaction.home.blog