Plastic pollutes our food sources, soil, and water, it breaks apart into billions of microplastics, spreading across the ocean where can easily be ingested by fish and marine mammals: in 2020 microplastics have even been found in human placenta. But before reaching oceans, 80% of plastics pollution flows into our oceans via rivers. Rivers are the blue arteries of our planet, however, many of the world’s rivers and streams are severely affected by pollution, with plastic being one of the major culprits. To limit the amount of plastic pollution beyond the reach of collection and recycling that enters our oceans, we must remove it before it gets there. We identified 3 main highly polluted rivers across the globe of which Ishem river in Albania was one of them. The inadequate waste management in Albania has led to thousands of tons of garbage being deposited in the Adriatic Sea. From the river Ishme alone, which is now a "dead river", about 733 tons of garbage of which about 110 tons are only plastic, polluting the sea coast and marine life with microplastics, are deposited in the Adriatic Sea every year. With “Plastic-free youth” we wanted to share our knowledge and get youth workers from 9 different countries on board for 1 week in Albania to generate awareness among young people about the plastic problem. As inclusion and education together with transformation are the main River Cleanup focus, we not only wanted to learn about the specific situations of the pollution of the Ishmë River but also to activate them by letting them organise cleanups themselves and to brainstorm on how we can solve this problem in both in the Ishmë region and in their own countries. Youth work has a very important role to play in the prevention of environmental disasters by supporting and empowering young people to deal with the challenges they face and strengthening their resilience and that of the places where they live. By providing youth workers with non-formal environmental methodologies and competences, it was our ambition - and we can finally say we succeeded - to make them River Cleanup “ambassadors”, spreading their positive impact on one of the most important challenges human mankind is facing for the moment. The specific objects we wanted to address with our project were: - Create more environmental awareness among young people; - Develop new competences and knowledge on plastic waste and cleanups to be returned to participating countries; - Equip youth workers with non-formal tools and methods to promote environmental solutions; - Enable the exchange of good practices of reaching out to young people with fewer opportunities through environmental youth work; - Enable cooperation and networking between partners from nine EU countries.