The main objective of the Eco Friends exchange project was to increase participants' knowledge about sustainability and the importance of conserving the natural environment. to young people from Portugal and Spain who had never participated before.By way of illustration, the project proposed knowledge of the circular economy, in addition to recommending that this model would have to be the fundamental pillar of food-producing companies, in order to achieve a fair redistribution of wealth for both producers as well as for distributors, and entrepreneurs. Likewise, responsible consumption was emphasized as a key way to care for the environment through changing current consumer habits. Now, the real challenge was that this project was aimed at young people with intellectual disabilities, which added difficulty, but also a nice challenge. This circumstance did not prevent an ambitious and realistic program of activities from being proposed and adapted. The benefits of organic farming were explained (the food waste figures are alarming), as well as the importance of food use was highlighted. With this double program, the aim was to teach participants to diversify their diet with organic and local products, in order to stop eating processed food. This would also produce less plastic, another fundamental challenge in the construction of a society that is fairer with the environment, more rational, and more sustainable. Continuing along this same line, the environmental problems that any society, more or less industrialized, faces today were also raised. To achieve this, it is essential that young Europeans and workers from different entities become familiar with, through formal education, but also through talks and workshops, a manual of good practices. All with the fundamental objective of developing the critical thinking of youth. Once this kind of theoretical framework has been established, in the design and planning phase, we consider the following aspects as general objectives: - Promote understanding of sustainability and increase participants' knowledge of the risk caused by food waste, industrial agriculture and pollution, which are some of the main ecological challenges of today's societies. - Increase participants' self-awareness about how their daily living habits impact nature and sustainability. - Encourage young participants to take initiatives to reduce the impact of their activities on the environment, its conservation and develop environmental awareness in their surroundings. - Promote intercultural dialogue, the traditional values of the rural world and the universal democratic values of young people from different rural areas of Europe and Spain. - Generate critical awareness in participants regarding their consumption habits. - Create long-term impact through the dissemination of the project results and maintain the network of participants to analyze the progress before and after the project, if their habits have changed, or if they have been involved in some environmental initiatives in their community. At the level of specific objectives, we proposed: - Know traditional sustainable techniques for the preservation of the environment. - Form knowledge about the conservation of the natural world, the circular economy, responsible consumption or food use. - Promote active citizenship of young people from both rural and urban areas, and in general European and diverse citizenship. - Promote interest in environmental issues and publicize different methods of fighting climate change through sustainable techniques and environmental initiatives at the local level, different ways of defending the sustainability of the territory, and the conservation of the natural world that is in danger of extinction due to the loss of natural species. - Strengthen teamwork, encourage initiative, and participation, and promote the importance of being active citizens also in issues that deal with the protection of nature. - Develop creativity and critical thinking in the participants. - Facilitate the exchange of ideas, experiences, and good practices on the subject between European participants and local entities. - Facilitate the participation of participants with mental disabilities. - Promote spaces for the search for creative solutions, brainstorming, giving everyone a voice, and respecting the opinion of each participant.