The “Speak up, we are listening” project idea is developed through our experience in trainings and exchanges with our partners we have had over the past years. What we have seen is that many youth workers, trainers and organisations have a lot of ideas and knowledge to share and issues they will like to address in order to reach public and spread awareness as well as to reach youngsters. However, many of them, even trainers, are lacking public speaking and storytelling skills in order to attract the attention of the youth and other stakeholders, especially which of the people from vulnerable backgrounds, and share the knowledge with them. The same goes for youth we are working with: most of them have a lots ideas, but are lacking the knowledge on how to present themselves, their work and abilities, to advocate for their rights and raise awareness about important issues they are facing. Unfortunately, inability to this often leads to social exlusion. The problem of social exclusion is rather serious and far-reaching. According to a study conducted by the European Commission, one third of young people in the European Union face the risk of social exclusion (European Commission, 2017). The consequences of social exclusion are numerous and serious – it affects various life domains: economic, political, cultural, social. Thus, the project is designed so that the youth workers can improve their advocacy skills through public speaking and digital storytelling as well as to share their knowledge obtained during the course to the target audience. The aim of this project is to empower youth workers and youth to advocate for their and others rights, raise awareness on the issues, present themselves, their work, and encourage dialogue and acceptance through improvement of their public speaking and digital story telling skills. This, in longer term, would lead to increased awareness of current issues, development of inclusive society as well as better employment situation for youth. The objectives of the “Speak up, we are listening” project are: - To Increase the understanding of social exclusion among youth workers, trainers, youth and youth organisations; - To increase awareness among youth workers, trainers, youth and youth organisations about the importance social advocacy in their work and daily lives; - To provide knowledge to youth workers, trainers, youth and youth organisations on how to prepare and deliver a presentation and speech with a clear message to achieve their goals; - To provide youth workers with tools and methods to share the gained knowledge with youth – ensure empowerment of youth including people with fewer opportunities by improving their public speaking and digital storytelling skills so that they can successfully present themselves, advocate for issues and rights, issues, and concerns that are important to them; - To expand the opportunities of youth work and youth centres as vehicles of social inclusion; - To show how youth organisations and youth workers can use public speaking and digital storytelling as advocacy tools in improving their work with youth as well as creating their organisations strong image; - To disseminate the knowledge acting as multipliers and share the skills acquired during the Training Course by youth workers delivering public speaking workshops for youth in their organisations during the Local Action Phase; - To strengthen cooperation between partner organisations and to provide them with the context to develop new project ideas. “Speak up, we are listening” project links to the following objectives of the Erasmus+ programme: - Support learners in the acquisition of competences (knowledge, skills and attitudes) with a view to improving their personal development and employability in the European labour market and beyond; - Support the professional development of those who work in education, training and youth with a view to innovating and improving the quality of teaching, training and youth work across Europe; - Increase the capacities, attractiveness and international dimension of organizations active in the education, training and youth fields so that they are able to offer activities and programmes that better respond to the needs of individuals, within and outside Europe.