We have received the evaluation of our report submitted by 1.11.2024, and we accept, that it was made fast in order to avoid waiting too long with a final payment, but we don't find it as poor as described in the evaluation. As it was solely partly accepted, we will of course develop the report, and we will start with this at "Descriptions of the project". We will though already here remind, that we were dealing with very mixed, and inclusive, groups of age 14 and not high-school nor university students, and though our program and methodology of using art as a tool started more than 20 years ago it is constantly evaluated and adjusted to the specific project and have again and again been seen as excellent precisely in terms of actively involvement, and why should we try to invent the deep dish again? ------------------------ The youth-exchange "North in Europe-II" (NinE-2) was Arttrain's contribution to the international school-network "Exchanges for All" (EFA), which has Arttrain as development-unit, and with the budget-cuts due to inflation and the war in Ukraine in 2023 for municipalities and so for the schools, this network had to find new ways of implementing youth-exchanges, which during 10 years of the cooperation have shown so valuable for the empowerment of the participating 8th grade students. In the application we did write: "This actual project, "NinE-2", seeks to export this way of cooperation to the North Nordic /North Europe and directly involve schools in DK, EE, FI and SE and so to increase the cooperation between these 4 countries around The Baltic Sea in order to: - Give the participating young people a feeling and experience of being a part of Europe, which is needed everywhere, but especially in small, geographically isolated cities as Stubbekøbing (DK) and Karksi-Nuia (EE) - Connect Lielahti School (FI) and Rydebäcksskolan (SE) even more with our EFA network, as they participate for the first time in May 23. - make the general cooperation between the schools more sustainable - Make more visible the values of youth-exchanges as a learning tool for schools - and as described work on establishing a specific EFA-north, which may implement exchanges, which are less expensive for the participating groups / schools. This we are also trying with the exchange in NinE-2, where we have shortened the activity days to 5 + the traveling in order to avoid too much weekend-work and so the necessary additional teacher-payments. Implementing Monday to Friday exchanges is a possibility within KA122-SCH, but not for KA152-YOU, but the project-venue for the exchange in NinE-2 was situated so, that only a minimum of transportation was needed for the Danish and Swedish groups, and so it was first of all a challenge for the workshop-leaders, but they were already used to working very intensively together with the young people and are usually saying, they are learning and producing a performance in 3 days. So with this development we did expect to have the same impact on the participants as previously and at the same time make it possible to implement more projects and so give the chance of international experiences to more young people, which is according to what we are writing and quoting below. NinE-2 was a fantastic project in a fantastic location with the centre "Strandhem" in South-Swedish Örkeljunga, and we did succeed with reaching the above mentioned objectives, even if it showed up, the Rydebäcksskolan had to say no to further participation in EFA-projects, as their budget-cuts forced them to kick 7 teachers. But Mr. Bo from Arttrain visited Rydebäcksskolan several times during the project, and so Arttrain is having a quite good contact with them still. Also other challenges has shown for EFA-network, which here in 2024 only got one project approved, which was very dissapointing, as more than 20 persons were working together on such during EFA's evaluation- & planning-meeting in Nykøbing F primo January. So right now the network is having challenges, but NinE-2 in itself became a great success and did connect especially the northern part of Europe with the EE-group traveling with ferry TLL-Stockholm and meeting here with the Finnish group from Tampere, who took the Turku-Stockholm-ferry and then continued south on the E4 to Skåne and Örkeljunga, while the Danish group from Stubbekøbing came with a local bus from island Falster. We tried a shorter type of exchanges than the usual Friday to Friday one, and here it was for DK- + SE-participants (and teachers) Sunday to Friday, while it for FI & EE was much longer, but with many interesting experiences on the way, as a student was explaining to EFA's research-team from University College Absalon: “I really enjoyed traveling by bus. I could see all the different houses and towns. Some of them are similar to the ones I know in Sweden. But some of them are quite different” (interview with student, EFA 2022, p. 26).