SUMMARY OF PROJECT IDEA This project 'Empowering young people through ESC projects' intended to increase the quality and quantity of volunteering activities for young adults in ecovillages and other sustainability projects, offering the volunteers a rich learning opportunity about all four dimensions of sustainability (ecological, social, economical and cultural), promoting active citizenship as well as values like tolerance, inclusion of diversity and respect. The project consisted of a training and networking event for youth workers enabling the participants and participating organisations to carry out successful international volunteering activities for youth of high quality, including through the European Solidarity Corps. Peer learning and exchange of good practice were a major component, and it also had some aspects of a contact making seminar. BACKGROUND All partners in this project work in the field of education for sustainable development and many of them are connected to the ecovillage movement. In recent years, ESC has become more and more widespread among ecovillages and in our wider networks all over Europe, with many very successful projects already completed. All have a strong focus on (environmental) sustainability. This project was a follow-up to the strategic partnership ‘volunteering - solidarity - sustainability’ (VSS) that was finished previous to this training and shared its results. This 18-month partnership for exchange of good practice between 4 ecovillages (Freundeskreis Ökodorf/Sieben Linden, Germany; Cloughjordan Community Farm, Ireland; Ananda Gaori, Denmark; Ängsbacka, Sweden) has developed a brochure and website about good practice of volunteering projects in ecovillages, and those project results directly feed into the proposed project presented here. The applicant Cloughjordan Community Farm and Freundeskreis Ökodorf wished to exploit the results of the partnership and spread the results to other organisations. The good practice exchange during the partnership has proven so very valuable to all involved that the partners wanted to continue this process, in a different format and involving a large number of other organisations, with different levels of experience. OBJECTIVES OF THE PROJECT The objective was to increase both the quality and quantity of international volunteering activities for youth focusing on sustainability and to empower the participating youth workers and organisations to deliver high quality volunteering projects, including through good practice exchange and peer learning. This overall objective is achieved through four different aspects: - Capacity building through sharing of good practices; - Deepen the partner’s understanding of all practical aspects of volunteering, e.g. integration of volunteers, intercultural issues, the learning experience offered etc.; - Establish partnerships for their future projects; - Create drafts for volunteering projects/ESC quality labels or strategy plans to be upgraded