Europe nowadays is facing many democratic challenges. Starting from the refugee crisis, Brexit, rise of nationalist and far right parties in many of our countries. The "shaking legs" of the EU democracy also puts the stability and future of EU on shaking legs. Throughout the history there are a lot of examples when the young people brought big changes, but unfortunately most of them were very difficult with protests and demonstrations. We as young people don't want the problems to be solved just when the situation escalate out of any control on the streets with protests like nowadays in Paris, Tirana, Hungary... But we want to have active and aware young people equipped with relevant knowledge and tools enabled to place themselves as active and important stakeholder in all important decision making processes and through that position constantly improve the youth situation in different fields. Those young people to be enabled to hold their local and national Governments in constant cooperation with them and accountable for the common decisions made in order to have relevant and implementable youth policies, tools and opportunities. For this to happen, we realized that the best way is through youth work. Because even though there is formal education for this topic, still is not enough and is not effective: "actions speaks louder than words!". Youth organisations are the ones who are working with the young people on daily basis, know their capacities and needs, know how to engage and activate them, just they need a bit of support and motivation. All things considered, we both- the applicants and our partners came up to the idea to organize this project which will also contribute to make our cooperation and friendship more intensive and closer. Since our partners are comming from EU member countries and EU candidate member countries, such project for the partners and us is very needed and is a perfect opportunity for exchanging of practices, getting and sharing experience and values from EU, which also encourages all the partners to create positive steps and make new activities about improving the democratic situation and strengthening the EU values in EU and Western Balkan countries. Because we believe that by giving tools and improving the competencies of the youth they will be much more motivated and willing to actively participate in the "political" live and by that improving the general situation of EU. Because the young people are not just Citizens of EU, but the most important factors for the present and the future of EU. The youth exchange : “Citizens of EU” aims at promoting the building and strengthening of open and democratic societies of the European Union. The content of the youth exchange is based on a concept of volunteering, participation, sharing experiences, experiential learning, so all that gained will enable the participants to use it in their countries for developing initiatives on local and regional level. OBJECTIVES: • To develop a common understanding of participation and explore instruments for its promotion among groups of young people • To increase the volume and quality of youth participation and raise awareness and competencies on concepts of citizenship, participation, volunteering,civil society and democracy; • To improve participants’ skills in project-management and develop youth initiatives through various concepts and methodologies; • To develop participants’ competence in using the revised European Charter on the Participation of Young People in Local and Regional Life • To develop new tools and ideas for follow up and the further cooperation within the programme Erasmus+ • To make the participants familiar with the Erasmus+ programme and other opportunities.