As a response to the global mass migration issues, Subtiluship CIC together with partners initiated a project Empathic Step. Europe’s biggest influx of migrants and refugees since the second world war, tensions between EU member states over how to handle irregular immigration from outside the bloc remain high. According to the UN, 139000 refugees and migrants risked their lives crossing the Mediterranean Sea in 2018, down 1 million from 2015, and the death/missing toll was 2275 vs 3771. We noticed that citizens were and still are irritated by the wave of immigration - discrimination, hate, anger and exclusion have risen due to this wave. A number of racist crimes in Europe have happened. The UK experienced inner clashes with immigrants and regional division due to BREXIT. There was an urgent need to reduce social tensions, to raise the level of tolerance, to promote the understanding and acceptance of each other despite the cultural and religious differences. Our aim was with the help of outdoor activities (swimming, running and hiking), as a development tool, to foster solidarity and social inclusion. How outdoor activities are related to inclusion? We believe that outdoor activities (we used various outdoor education methods, running and hiking being the core) through its universality, can transcend cultural, socio-economic and political barriers, which is very important in an international context. Outdoor activities are extremely powerful tools for development, especially within international communities. Moreover, outdoor activities reflect on different values and can create a bridge between different social groups forming better mutual understanding. The answer could be reaffirmed by quoting the UN, which “recognize that sport, as a tool for education, development and peace, can promote cooperation, solidarity, tolerance, understanding, social inclusion and health at the local, national and international levels”. Why did we choose swimming, running and hiking and why activities were done in South England, Northern Ireland and Iceland? First of all, hiking is a big individual and group challenge, when instincts of self-preservation disappear. It becomes easier to analyze sensitive topics, people do not hide under the masks, therefore, better results could be reached. Youth also learn faster in such an environment. Running part was inspired from a book Born To Run, written by C. McDougall, where the author analyses human roots and essential capacity to run long distances. Swimming in the sea is used primarily as a symbol to solidarize with migrants, who died trying to escape their country, but the benefits of swimming as an activity is outstanding - it take the stress off body, builds endurance, muscle strength and cardiovascular fitness, helps to maintain a healthy weight, healthy heart and lungs. Second, we had directly related it with a situation where a lot of refugees had to walk or run over mountains, cross the sea and borders to reach peace in Europe. Similarly we stepped in other shoes for a while. Parallel helped us to start thinking about the current situation. Third, the concept Empathic Step attempted to search connecting points from (1) a regional perspective, thus implementing three youth exchanges in three different islands, two different UK regions and remote Iceland, (2) value perspective – combination of sports and hiking with special methods, where our own behaviour was analysed and important values particularly related to our topic: Knowledge Involvement Nature Growth By merging active lifestyle with non-formal education methods in youth work, we strived with this project to: - offer personal development space for youngsters to understand themselves and reflect on own behavior and behavior of others; - challenge the perception of the structures within our society that impair social inclusion or foster discrimination; - overcome the stereotypes of different cultures; - raise awareness of discrimination; - build a broader understanding of what an inclusive attitude means and to start intercultural and interreligious dialogue; - understand the connections between culture and sport and to understand the inter-cultural aspects of outdoor activities; - raise the sense of empathy towards other people. Specific objectives of the E+ was to reach the Europe 2020 targets and one of them that is very related to the goal of our project: "Fighting poverty and social exclusion". Special emphasis was given to 2019 E+ goals in reaching out to marginalized young people, promoting diversity, intercultural and interreligious dialogue, and common values of freedom. One of our sources was a manual for Non-Formal Education Through Sport and physical activities with young people Move & Learn that has been funded with support from the European Commission and the European Youth Foundation of the Council of Europe.