We started planning the project at the beginning of 2020. We, 8 partners in this project, came up with this project idea, because we saw it as a great opportunity to bring innovations and to improve the youth work we were doing at our communities by bringing our work more “beyond 4 walls” – to the nature. We wanted to develop and explore more how to use the tool of “HIKES+” in our youth work. Within this project we coined the concept “HIKES+”, by which we mean carefully designed outdoor activities that include (1) hiking in the nature part, which will always be accompanied with (2) non-formal learning activities (outdoors or indoors, depending on the context) that empower young people on a personal level, allow them to improve skills of working/being together with each other and also allow to discover more and be more connected to their communities. While hikes as such are not anything innovative, adding a conscious educational content that brings clear outcomes (a “+” element), is something that we were not doing (much). AIM The main aim of the project was to contribute to innovations and improving the quality of youth work in our communities by including “HIKES+” as conscious tool in youth work practices in 8 communities for (1) empowering young people, (2) promoting better cooperation among them (3) as well as creating better connection and belonging to the local community. OBJECTIVES O1. To build awareness about the power of outdoor experiential learning activities (especially the “hikes+”) as a tool for young peoples’ personal and social empowerment as well as promoting connection to the community. O2. To develop the tool “hikes+” by experiencing, exploring and defining the crucial elements that make the difference between “just hikes” and “HIKES+”, paying special attention to importance of including non-formal learning (NFL) dimension. O3. To develop skills of 24 youth workers to design and implement different kind of “hikes+” (based on the needs and local context) – both in laboratory settings (with/for each other) and by organizing at least 2 “hikes+” in each participating country/community (in the 3-5 month period in between the meetings in Slovakia) O4. To involve and empower by “hikes+” in each community (country) at least 50 young people (making sure that at least 25% of them are the young people that have not been active in regular youth work activities provided by the organization) and encourage leadership skills of young people (choosing 1-2 youth leaders to join A2). O5. To share the good practices, evaluate “hikes+” and develop new youth project and follow-up project ideas in a “”step-forward” seminar (A2). O6.To promote sharing of results of the project (gather the educational materials, ideas on tools and experience stories from the project in platform Padlet), establish peer-support system (regular online meetings) that allow building closer cooperation between the participants and organizations also beyond face-to-face meetings.