CULTURE+ was a Youth exchange between UK, Italy, Greece, Lithuania and Cyprus that aimed to get together youth from various social, cultural providing them with social tools and skills to help to raise the awareness of their cultural diverse surroundings, to find out and understand the differences as well as to be proud to except their cultural and personal identity. The aim of the project was to let young groups from different countries to meet and live together. Although, each of these countries have different culture, traditions and language, we wanted to show them that through movements, culture and music we can abolish international barriers and improve learning performance while enhancing intercultural awareness. We would like to create more modern, dynamic, professional environment for our organisation with this youth exchange. We came up with the idea of organising a youth Exchange as we have key members who can dance, sing, play various instruments. We thought about the possible ways to mix their talents into european level. The main aim of this project was to contribute to the process of building tolerant integrated society based on respect to cultural diversity. Gathering young people from other European countries and sharing knowledge by exercising in common workshops seemed best way for it. National Traditions and cultures are disappearing and many young people are not aware of how society is loosing and forgetting it's own roots. We started to search for youth groups in Europe engaged in the ethnic and music and dances who are aware of social topics and its importance. We shared this idea with other friends, who are also volunteering in youth centre, and we met enthusiastic feedback. Together we believed that we could organise an educational and productive project. Some of us had a chance to participate in youth exchanges, also as a host, which gave us insight into the background of projects, it multiplied our knowledge, and by organising this exchange it was a great opportunity for us to put knowledge into practice. The objectives were: - To collect young people with similar interests to us and promote their current activities as well as show the magnitude of opportunities offered us by awareness of our origins. - Despite we are coming from different countries and our cultures are so diverse, we're all the young generation of Europe citizens and it's possible to collaborate and share with each other our skills. - To raise awareness about the importance of inclusion on local and European levels; - To promote European citizenship’s values; - To encourage intercultural dialogue, multicultural diversity, social inclusion; - To explore the pictures that majority has of people from different cultures; - To analyse the role of mass media in formation of stereotypes and social prejudices. Our priorities were: - Active participation of youth and their continued involvement in society, integration, developing capacity, firstly by learning more about their own origins, later about other cultures and finally by the transmission of knowledge that they acquired. - Respect for our cultural diversity, traditions, individuality, as there was a chance to compare them with other European citizens and to realise how colourful and worthy they are. - Cooperation in Europe, inter cultural dialogue, ability to influence decisions regarding the project. We kept in touch with our partners involving them into a process of preparation as much as possible The main theme was to show colourfulness and multiculturalism of European countries. We focused on dance and music because we believe that this is most attractive and common to youth. We believe that all people have a huge potential but not all people have the possibility to use it. No matter of our social, economical or cultural background, most of us face societal pressures to achieve in ways that might not be in our best potential. We believe that the aims and objectives of this project were in direct connection with the objectives of Erasmus+ and KA1. Through the mobility we promoted diversity and intercultural dialogue.Involving participants from different countries made our project a perfect platform for intercultural learning and for non-formal multicultural dialogue. The youth exchange aimed to gain cultural awareness and to promote social inclusion and solidarity, which was connected to the EU 2020 Targets. The main outcome of the project was to empower and equip youth with the competences needed to find creative solutions for social issues and various forms of communication that touch people on deeper levels of consciousness. e.g. through art and culture. Together we wanted to discover and explore traditions and habits behind the stories of young people with different experiences and backgrounds and promote diversity.