Part of our approved project Activity Plan involved running 3 intercultural and environmental youth exchanges called 'Building Walls Breaking Walls' on Cape Clear Island, Ireland in July 2024 and in Lecce, Italy in October 2024 & May 2025 . The specific objectives for each of the 3 Building Walls Breaking Walls youth exchanges in our approved Activity Plan were as follows:- - To create a safe learning space for a nature experience for young people from 3 different countries. -To educate young people in traditional and ecological handcraft and to repair/build walls as an inter-cultural cooperation project. - To support the inter-cultural learning between young people from the participating European and Middle Eastern countries. - To bring down culture and religion-based stereotypes and fight xenophobia among young people - To create a space of sharing experiences with walls in conflict areas. - To be physically active through outdoor activities. -To participate in the preparation and cooking of food and cleaning of the accommodation. For the first youth exchange in Cape Clear Island, Ireland in July 2024, young people (part-funded through the Erasmus+ programme) participated from Ireland and Italy. Also some Swiss young people participated (funded by the Swiss government). For the second youth exchange in Lecce, Italy in October 2024, young people (part-funded through the Erasmus+ programme) participated from Ireland and Italy. And for the third youth exchange in Lecce, Italy in May 2025, young people (part-funded through the Erasmus+ programme) participated from Ireland, Italy, Palestine and Israel. The purpose was primarily twofold:- -to restore and/or build physical walls which contribute and enhance the local community and its beneficiaries and create environmental and ecological awareness; -and to engage in intercultural and interfaith workshops to break down cultural barriers and borders which exist and create greater awareness. The original plan was to include Palestine and Israel in all 3 youth exchanges as we had done in previous editions. However due to the conflict in the Middle East we were not able to involve these countries initially. We successfully applied for a time extension of an additional 9 months.This allowed us to find a new partner country which was Italy. By the last week of our extended grant funded period we were eventually able to include Palestine and Israel. In our original Activity Plan we had both envisaged running both Learner Mobilities (in the form of youth exchanges) and Staff Mobilities. All of the above took a lot of time and by the end of the funding period we were unfortunately not able to implement one element of our application which to organise a short staff mobility due to various issues including the aforementioned conflict in partner countries and availability of staff to attend.