Foundation Disadvantaged young people face significant challenges in successfully navigating the transition from school to vocational training and employment. This problem is even more acute in remote rural areas, where young people often lack full opportunities to develop and realize their potential. The young people involved in our project live in regions where political parties that explicitly oppose diversity, integration, and inclusion are gaining increasing support. We addressed these issues in the project "Café zum Glück 2024. Inclusion to go." In this initiative, disadvantaged and non-disadvantaged young people from Germany and Poland jointly ran a café on the premises of the educational center. In doing so, we actively implemented key priorities of the EU Youth Strategy and the Erasmus+ Programme, such as empowerment, participation, social integration, inclusion, appreciation, diversity, cross-border mobility, rural development, and successful transitions into work. The project also realized core elements of the Paris Declaration of the Ministers of Education (2015) as well as the Erasmus+ Diversity and Inclusion Strategy (2021), which views diversity as an opportunity and enrichment. Erasmus+ Dimension The unique character of the project lay in its combination of economic competencies, intercultural learning opportunities, democratic learning experiences, and efforts toward inclusion and integration. In the face of growing nationalism, xenophobia, radicalization, and the climate crisis, our junior company took a stand for tolerance, diversity, and sustainability. We contributed to strengthening social cohesion and enhancing the young people’s resilience against external influences. Our aim was to give these young people the opportunity to discover, develop, and apply their potential—even under the difficult conditions of a rural, border-region context. In doing so, we effectively built a protective wall against radicalization, extremism, violence, and the exclusion of those perceived as weak. Empowerment The project pursued several goals. On one hand, inclusion and diversity were to be practically implemented and experienced. Many of the participants came from special education schools and children’s homes, had significant learning deficits, or came from precarious family and social circumstances. Through targeted empowerment, both disadvantaged and non-disadvantaged youth were given greater equality of opportunity and social inclusion. In the economically underdeveloped German-Polish border region, the café provided participants with a chance to gain hands-on experience in everyday working life—especially in service and accounting—and to acquire practical skills that can help them transition into the “real” world of work. Methods The junior company is a pedagogical project format that is associated with a high degree of motivation and interest among all participants. Once again, it has proven to be an effective method for bringing economic mechanisms closer to young people in an experiential way and for improving their chances of entering the workforce. To ensure good and low-conflict cooperation between the different "excluded groups," topics such as diversity, intercultural learning, inclusion/exclusion, and language animation played a key role. We responded to the special circumstances of disadvantaged youth by fostering a culture of appreciation, providing reliable support, and promoting a diversity-conscious attitude that views the individuality of young people as an asset. With the Youthpass Certificate, we made the learning process visible, transparent, and understandable for everyone. "Happiness Concept" The name of the café, "Café zum Glück" (literally: "Café to Happiness" or "Café of Luck"), with its various dimensions of meaning, played an important role. On the one hand, visitors to the café experienced a sense of happiness by enjoying the offerings—they felt they were part of something joyful. On the other hand, the name provided a framework for reflecting on the concept of happiness (e.g., living in a sustainable and healthy world). We raised the question: What truly makes us happy? Inside the café, we made the idea of happiness visible through quotes and images. The café staff did many things to make visitors feel "happy"—through decorations, music, and atmosphere. Happy visitors gave positive feedback to the team, which in turn made the project participants feel happy and fulfilled—through recognition, responsibility, community, respect, success, and through inclusion and integration.