The “EmpowerED – Ignite Youth Action for Change” project was born from an Erasmus+ training course in Berlin in 2023, where several youth workers belonging to different European organizations shared their concern about how youth organizations struggle to actively involve young people in their activities. This discussion gave rise to the need of delving into the reasons for such lack of success, and of finding a way to foster youth engagement. A literature search started to find European data about youth’s involvement in local organizations, lack thereof, their motivations, and their needs. Furthermore, youth workers exchanged their experiences and thoughts, and in some cases they had informal interviews with young people. The results of this data collection showed that youth organizations in Europe often organize activities using a top-bottom approach, that doesn’t consider the real needs of young people, thus creating irrelevant activities; that the organizations’ approach is too adult-led and doesn’t actively involve young people in the creation of the activities; and that the organizations communicate their initiatives inefficiently, using a language that doesn’t belong to young people. These findings paved the way for the planning of the present training course, that will involve 24 youth workers in a 7-day training course in Italy at the Casa a Colori Dolo, Dolo (VE) from 1 to 7 July 2025. The main goal of the training course is to train youth workers with the necessary tools, knowledge, and strategies to engage young people in their local organizations, which will in turn help young people become more proactive citizens. The specific objectives of the training course are the following: - To enhance YW’ capacity to understand and respond to the evolving needs and interests of YP by equipping them with skills and tools for effective needs assessment, youth consultation, and co-creation of activities. - To empower YW to create opportunities for YP to develop and exercise leadership by providing them with tools to facilitate youth-led initiatives and incorporate youth decision-making in all stages of program implementation. - To modernize YW' communication approach by introducing them to innovative, digital, and hybrid methods of outreach and communication that align with the habits and preferences of digital-native youth. The project is intended to be a learning space for youth workers who are eager to make a change in young people’s lives but do not have the tools that allow them to be effective. Through the training course, we will equip youth workers with practical tools for conducting effective needs assessments and engaging in youth consultation, so that they can design programs and opportunities that resonate with their target audience, making their local organizations more relevant and appealing to youth. They will also gain the tools to co-create and facilitate youth-led activities, and ensure that young people have a voice in the decision-making process. Youth workers will also be introduced to innovative digital and hybrid methods of outreach and communication, to reach young people more effectively. In short, youth workers will gain the necessary knowledge and skills to engage the local young people in the organizations’ activities and thus in the community life. From the point of view of youth work, the project will be a great opportunity for the organizations involved. The ultimate goal of youth organizations is in fact to reach young people and to intercept their needs and interests, in order to offer them activities, trainings, and events that are aligned with their necessities. Without this cooperation between organizations and young people, youth work will offer only inadequate activities and it will risk to impose to young people things they are not interested in. Therefore, the higher youth involvement that will be obtained from the present project will be an opportunity to bring organizations closer to the needs of young people on the topic and to understand how young people want to be involved in learning processes and to gather additional needs for new projects that can further involve young people. The project will create trust on the part of young people in the organizations as they will be able to see in them an attentive interlocutor listening to their needs.