“DEMOcrisis, fostering active citizenship in times of crisis” is a 8 days KA105 training course that will gather in Zegrze, Poland, 21 participants from 8 different countries: Cyprus, Denmark, France, Greece, Italy, Latvia, Poland and Spain. Our primary aim is to strengthen democratic values among the participants of our TC. We will confront it with the raise of populistic and authoritarian systems across Europe, why they become more popular, what is the result of it: sense of insecurity, frustration (because they offer easy and cheap solutions to social problems, that are in reality more complex), discrimination of certain groups not in power, raise in hate speech in public communication etc. The participants will realize that the solution to these problems is in democratic values – and they will understand that in the short term it may seem difficult, but in the long term turn out to be more effective than populistic or autocratic systems. This is very important taking into consideration that this year there are European elections and other national elections (eg in Poland) and it is also the year when Brexit is planned to take place. The other aims are: - to present the situation of democratic and non-democratic movements in each of the country participating in this TC - to reflect and learn how to use our civic rights for the sake of ourselves, people in our region, country and generally in Europe - to learn how to deal with hate speech - to develop the ability of critical thinking in terms of social issues The main objective of this TC is raising awareness among youth workers and giving them the specific tools. They will be aware how important is their work to deal with hate in the society, how to prevent anti-democratic actions, how to protect and develop marginalized and vulnerable groups. They will discover that if they use properly their rights, they will become part of the solution to these unwanted situations. They might be now also in crisis, observing crisis of democratic systems across Europe, but our objective is to deal with their doubts, find answers to them and strengthen their belief in democratic systems. We can do it together because the social reinforcement of more than 20 people devoted to this topic from 7 different European countries will be really strong. The other objectives focus on: - sharing perspectives and best practices of how they deal with hate speech and encourage active citizenship - gathering experiences from people with different background and amount of experience in the youth work devoted to this topic so that we will be able to make a mélange from it to create a bigger picture - give more info about Erasmus Plus and how its projects foster the development of civil rights, critical thinking and democratic values in different European and also non-European countries - give the space for intercultural exchange and expression, to the limit not to violate the rights of others (like avoiding disrespect in their communication), to share what is similar and different, easy and difficult among various countries - encourage them to participate more visibly in their communities, in their region, country and Europe, in terms of political and social life We want to achieve also the inclusion of marginalized groups, in terms of their social, economic, geographic etc background. We will give the opportunity to those willing to take part in this TC and support them as much as we can to make it easier for them. For example the partner organizations work with youngsters from rural area ("Xuventude Verde Polo Cambio" from Spain) and with unemployed people and NEETs (“Stressball” from Cyprus) so they will be able to select participants from these social groups. The only restriction is the level of English enough to communicate, even with mistakes but understandable. Only the part of the work will take place during the TC. After they come to their homes, they will spread the information about and motivation towards democratic values in their surrounding and also will give activities they learned during the project (eg a group process technique) as they will receive also a follow up tips and instructions how to lead these exercises by themselves and involve others in it.