WHAT WE WANTED TO ACHIEVE BY IMPLEMENTING THE PROJECT The last couple of years, everyone’s lives were strongly influenced and especially for the ones who are vulnerable, thanks to the global pandemic that spread across the world. Now, many more youth are victims of social exclusion, economic disparity, unemployment, depression, mental isolation, harmful behaviors and anxiety. This project wanted to address the most important needs of the vulnerable youth (hard to reach, NEETs, excluded) and more particularly the Need for Inclusion, well-being and resilience, need to be heard, need for direction and meaning in life, need for understanding their strengths and using them to get employed. Having in mind these needs, the project “The Art of Listening” was born with an aim to support the professional development of youth workers by training them to use innovative and qualitative tools of Mentoring with youth, especially the ones who are vulnerable (with fewer opportunities, NEETS, excluded/at risk for exclusion) in order to strengthen the above mentioned needs. Mentoring is a process of guiding and supporting youth to make progress in their life. Mentoring offers a safe space to youth where they can express themselves freely. The mentor shares wisdom but most importantly deeply listens the youth, asks vital questions, identifies their needs, offers suggestions for further work and tracks their development. Mentoring can be done on individual or small groups’ bases, both offline and online, giving thus the opportunity to overcome distance challenges of reaching out to the hard to reach youth. The project “The Art of Listening” introduced into youthwork the concept of soulful mentoring. Soulful Mentoring is a comprehensive, ecocentric & holistic mentoring process which encompasses a variety of styles such as nature and art based mentoring, individually or in small groups mentoring, offline and ONLINE mentoring. OBJECTIVES By the end of the project 27 youth workers to: 1: Increase by 75% their knowledge on innovative tools and educational approaches of mentoring and their benefits for vulnerable youth (hard to reach, NEETs, excluded/at risk for exclusion) 2: Enhance by 75% their skills in mentoring vulnerable youth 3: Increase by 75% their motivation and inspiration to apply mentoring in their youth work 4: Become by 75% more acquainted to use online tools for mentoring 5: Implement 27 follow-up mentoring action plans with vulnerable youth in the countries involved. The project also enhanced cooperation between organisations in the youth field, strengthened the international dimension of youth activities and equipped youth workers with competences and methods for their professional development, enabling them to better support hard to reach young people.