Our foundation has over 60 years of experience in non-formal education and youth work. We have a hands-on approach to learning, which means that with each program or activity, our goal is to support people in taking their learning experience into their own hands - instead of offering only knowledge, we guide them as they build the skills and develop the behaviours that are needed to create a fulfilling life for themselves. This creates engagement and ownership. We love what we do, and sharing our knowledge and insights with other professionals adds another layer to our work. We are always inspired to see how others build what we have learned into their own practices while adding their unique touch. For this reason, we also have frequent professional development activities (programs focused on coaching, mentoring, and facilitation) through which we share our know-how and experiences. We see that over the past few years, a lot of youth work competencies are leaving the field and a lot of organizations (even the old and experienced ones) are working with small capacities, with only a few skilled professionals - the pandemic had a huge influence on this (a lot of people left the field simply because they were not able to make a living or because they were not able to make this work sustainable). Although new people are joining these organizations, many lack clear guidance on how to improve their practices. They are often in assisting roles, or they are asked to perform without having the chance to practice first. Most of these people are not able to run educational activities by themselves, and for a lot of them, standing in front of people and getting their message across is already a significant challenge. Even though they have a couple of work forms, they struggle to use and adapt these according to the needs of their participants. Additionally, a lot of them feel isolated within their local communities, and they miss the chance to connect and grow together with other professionals. To respond to this situation, we decided to create a project frame with a couple of youth organizations from our network. Our shared intention was to train the youth work competencies of our staff members while also stimulating an exchange of good practices. We wanted to support people in what they were already doing by focusing on the following main topics: how to communicate and work with people, how to add more educational value to their activities, how to make their activities more creative and inclusive, more engaging for their participants, how to connect with young people and how to support them in using the learnings in their everyday lives. Overall, we wanted to support our participants in working independently with young people while bringing new ideas and projects to the organizations, and while keeping the organizations running. We see that working with young people in different settings takes different forms - there is no one-size-fits-all. Still, many young professionals tend to copy activities that they see in other projects, but often lack the know-how to adapt these to their own groups. What they are missing is real practice and a solid framework that can help them adjust and work more effectively, with more confidence and creativity. As there is currently hardly any youth work education, we felt inspired to create a hands-on learning experience. Our aim was to share our knowledge in a way that not only teaches but also encourages people to try things out, reflect, and learn by doing. From our experience, learning doesn’t really happen without the chance to practice - working with people can only be learned by actually working with people. In general, our main objectives were the following: - improving the youth work skills and competencies of our staff members (43 youth workers in total, without the main facilitator) - supporting them to deliver valuable and relevant learning programs for their youngsters; - supporting the work of the organizations through skilled staff members - dividing workload and running new initiatives; - bringing together various theories, work forms, and techniques from different fields and work environments - exchange of practices; - offering "on the job" mentoring and guidance for our staff members while working with young people; - creating a support system of youth workers and youth organizations on national and international levels; - broadening the experience of the involved organizations; - gathering clear guidelines, methods, and hands-on templates through which our staff members (and other youth workers) could independently improve their practices; - creating local events (20 SDOAs) to share our results - engaging activities for youngsters, and training sessions for other young professionals; - gathering 10 articles to share our experiences; - ensuring the presence of high-quality youth work practices in each local community.