The youth exchange "Building bridges through emotions" will bring together 30 participants and 6 group leaders in Gudevitsa, Bulgaria in August, 2020 from six partner organizations: Arteam Bulgaria (Sofia), Navissos from Serbia, Association Make a Circle from Italy, Youth Empowerment Association from The Republic of North Macedonia, United Societies of Balkans from Greece, Avrupa Entegrasyon Dernei from Turkey. “Emotions are the driving, activating power that lets you turn your decisions into action. You need to control and manage emotions, not to eliminate them.” Napoleon Hill Emotions are universal for all cultures and religions and shared by all humans. Every person would benefit enormously from developing and improving their skills to recognize and manage their emotions effectively. This would impact positively their personal, social and professional life. Recognizing our emotions increases not only our self-awareness but also helps us understand the emotions of others and manage our own. In this project emotions will be used as a channel to build deeper connection and empathy between people from different nationalities, religions, cultures and social statuses by increasing mutual tolerance, acceptance and respect. When people are seeing differences in our global society as threatening and unwanted, they tend to encapsulate themselves in their communities and promote the speech of hate and radicalization. We will use emotions as universal experience to create a bridge between different cultures and religions, promote mutual respect and acceptance and present differences as valued and enriching our lives. By taking participating in this project and sharing their personal stories with the others, participants will be able to discover how common our experiences, emotions and feelings are and that humans' inner world is not that different after all. They will increase their emotional intelligence which has been proven to impact positively people's professional and personal life by developing deeper satisfaction. Participants will be provided with practical skills to express their emotions respectfully and activities to practice their new competences in a safe environment. Objectives: 1. Self-awareness: To develop emotional literacy by introducing participants with the terms of emotional intelligence and emotional agility (the ability to accept and accurately name our emotions in an appropriate and respectful way) and increasing self-awareness, self-management, social-awareness and relationship management using non-formal education. To provide an opportunity for participants to develop their emotional intelligence by increasing their self-awareness and understanding how their actions and words impact others and improving their soft skills through role play 2. Encouraging diversity, tolerance and mutual acceptance To learn more about other cultures and traditions through personal experience in a multicultural environment. To build trusting and respectful relationships by increasing critical thinking through revising stereotypes, misinformation and false assumptions about people from different nationalities and religions. To learn how to be more inclusive to people with a diverse cultural background, specifically marginalized groups both in theory and practice. 3. Building bridges through emotions between people from different nationalities, religions, cultures and social statuses To use emotions as a way to connect and put yourself in the shoes of the other To encourage a real exchange of ideas, information, practical tools, activities and projects regarding self-awareness, tolerance, acceptance and respect the differences between people. To encourage intercultural dialogue and give the participants the opportunity to identify common values with people from different countries and social groups. We plan to include participants with fewer opportunities and from marginalized groups since they are more vulnerable to exclusion and negative attitudes towards them and thus are more likely to experience negative emotions. We want to provide marginalized people with a safe place to explore themselves and their emotions in a new perspective as well as communicate and create meaningful relationships with others who accept and respect them as equals. We want to introduce them to the Erasmus+ programs and values and all the opportunities for change that they provide. Participants will have the chance to experience first hand that they have more in common than they realize regardless of their cultural, religious and social background.