“Beyond the 4 walls: exploring outdoor education” is a training course that resulted from a successful partnership of 6 organisations: EN ROOT Association, Association Walktogether, Rumbo A Europa, Pangea Association, Coda di Lupo and C.E.R.T. The central aim of this training course is to offer the proper space and resources to all the participating youth workers, in order for them to understand the role of outdoor education in youth’s development and integrate it into the sessions they facilitate. This idea originates from a project that some of our youth workers participated in last year, where they were grouped in intercultural teams and were asked to research the main causes behind the lack of young people’s awareness about the current environmental issues of modern society. 6 persons from our present project community did a thorough analysis and concluded that the core reason why young people cannot grasp the dimensions of environmental issues is the simple fact that they don’t get many chances to be outside, in nature, where they can see most of those issues with their own eyes. That was the first place where we realised that the lack of contact with the outside environment is the cause of many problems that young people are confronting with. In addition, the majority of young people spend far more time inside than they do outside during their education years. After doing further research and intensive needs analysis in the 6 partner communities, we realised that, even though formal education made some efforts to compensate for this with specific activities, we believe it’s high time that the non-formal educational sector makes more efforts to sustain outdoor education as well. In order to do so, we formulated a project with the following vision: Our project aims to equip 30 youth workers with the tools, motivation and competencies to support a lifelong behavioural development and environmental awareness of the young people they work with, through outdoor education. Our core objectives are: During the 10 months of the training, 30 youth workers will get acquainted with the theoretical foundation of outdoor education and its role in innovating education. Throughout this training course, 30 youth workers will develop at least 3 key skills necessary for facilitating outdoor activities: effective planning , decision-making and problem-solving. During the training period, all youth workers will learn at least 5 new engaging non-formal methods related to outdoor and environmental education.