Youth in contemporary societies are challenged to explore and remain in their true authentic nature. Dominant systems are creating stressful structures for people to focus mainly on cognitive skills and materialistic & individualistic expressions of success thus creating difficulties in human interactions lacking emotional intelligence and social communication abilities. Young people need empowerment and facilitation by more experienced peers and leaders who are skilled in the field of healthy lifestyle, mindfulness, emotional intelligence, intercultural learning and non-formal education in whole. It is of essential importance to inspire and integrate youngsters with their emotional and mental state into a more natural and healthy educational environment as well as to navigate them in overcoming the challenges of modern society in personal, social and intercultural context with non-formal education methods. We believed that through self - discovery and self-connection youngsters are able to build strong bonds between each other. First of all they need competences to overcome their own challenges and acquire a healthy emotional and mental state to understand themselves and only after this they will be able to understand and accept their peers coming from other cultures with different backgrounds. Thus we envisioned two main directions for young people’s challenges nowadays: 1) to develop self-discovery, self-connection and stress resistance competences; 2) to get competences in intercultural learning and communication. By creating a series of activities that address mindful and healthy living, strengthens mind-body-emotions interconne ctedness, brings us back to the nature, fosters intercultural learning and dialogue we aimed at supporting young people in their development in a way that allows them to become who they really are and not who they think they should be according to the social pressure. Therefore, this youth exchange gathered 24 young people from Germany, Portugal, Russia and Armenia with the aim to create a space and conditions where the gain of basic tools and understanding of the interconnectedness and uniqueness of this world were awaiting participants of the “YOUth connects cultures!” programme. The specific objectives of the youth exchange were the following: - To foster self-development and hidden potential activation of participants through non-formal learning activities and methods - To strengthen body-mind-emotion interconnectedness as a holistic approach of healthy life and wellbeing - To develop participants’ competences on intercultural learning and dialogue in interactions with their peers - To raise participants’ awareness and sensitivity towards environmentally conscious behaviour in their countries - To form a network among like-minded organisations and develop follow-up projects on the similar topics