Our organizations are daily facing the psychological consequences of the COVID on young people, who don’t see any future positive outcomes in their lives due to the uncertainty and ambiguous historical moment. The outbreak of COVID showed a lack of civic engagement of youth and our organization was strongly hit since it is hard to promote circus activities in time of lockdown. The fear of contact became a relevant issue in the already existing need of our youth group to find themselves, making them even more hesitant about the future. At the same time, it strongly undermined the concept of mobility, cross border cooperation and even European citizenship values, highlighting several issues that young people should and would like to work on through creativity and lifelong learning. The involved organizations are offering opportunities for local youth to make a difference in their community, choosing to train themselves in circus art, as well as circus as an approach to competence development, inclusion, and engagement. We noticed that the situation of reaching youth living in geographically deprived areas, as well as to the ones with mental disorders and disabilities, is becoming a way harder since they lost motivation to be present, even online. According to their families, they have issues in seeing any occupational path, worried about the upcoming crisis post-COVID. Acting now was a first step to impact this attitude, avoiding a total absence of responsibility in society which would have implications on civic sense and related competences. This youth exchange wished to contribute to the acquisition of some civic and social competences within intercultural groups, stimulating a creative attitude in problem-solving and decision-making, using non-formal and informal learning tools, and a participatory approach. In this regard, our project was a light in this dark moment. It was a safe corner for our youth and their community leaders to feel motivated again, to regain trust in contact - mediated by all the sanitary measures in place - and offering fresh perspectives. It is a moment to make them believe in themselves and understand how to become resilient, a competence which they mentioned they would apply to cope with stressful events, crises, and future job integration. We touched on the fact that empowerment of youth in becoming active members of their communities can be exercised through different art methods, including circus, while seeing them take the lead of their own professional path and flourish as the citizens of tomorrow, raising the chances for employment. We provided space for our participants to exchange ideas, gain experiences, and empower themselves, particularly focusing in the field of creative expression and competence development, supporting their active inclusion in the post-COVID society. Moreover, they were able to show skills, plan and come up with creative solutions, in a common effort to raise the chances of employability, mainly resilience to the adverse conditions they are facing. Stemming from the idea to propose circus as a method of inclusion at an international level, enriching youth work methodologies, the following objectives were set in the initial ideation of the project: - to support the reflection of youngsters on participation, their role, and condition in modern society, through the sharing and acquisition of circus methods and non-formal education activities - to learn how to use circus as a tool to run initiatives at the local level, involving stakeholders in the process, which could be useful for the inclusion of young people with fewer opportunities - to tackle and perform, according to participant's talents, the main problems related to personal development and employability, focusing on motivational issues - to decrease the psychological barriers, troubles, prejudices, and stereotypes related to the upcoming obstacles they are facing to build a more inclusive post-COVID society - to acquire crucial job-related skills for the time of crisis such as resilience, pro-activity, patience, perseverance, self- expression and esteem, goal setting, problem solving and negotiation, teamwork - to promote and getting to know Erasmus+ and European Solidarity Corps in the involved communities for future projects