Rural Youth Lab was designed to strengthen the competences of youth workers, educators and young facilitators working in rural and mountainous areas, equipping them with innovative tools to address educational, environmental and social challenges through non-formal education. The overall objective was to improve the quality of youth work in rural contexts by promoting these territories as valuable educational, community and cultural environments rather than peripheral or disadvantaged areas. To achieve this, the project combined outdoor learning, place-based learning, citizen science, ecopedagogy, agroecology, gamification and participatory methodologies. More specifically, the project aimed to: strengthen youth workers’ capacity to use natural environments and rural territories as educational resources through place-based and bioregional learning approaches; develop competences related to climate resilience, environmental adaptation, outdoor leadership and the management of complex challenges in rural contexts; promote innovative approaches based on ecopedagogy, decolonial education, antispeciesism, environmental sustainability and social justice, fostering a critical understanding of the relationships between communities, ecosystems and systems of inequality; enhance practical competences in citizen science, agroecology, permaculture and participatory environmental monitoring; provide participants with transferable and easily adaptable educational tools, methods and activities that could be implemented in their own local and organisational contexts; strengthen international cooperation among organisations working in rural youth work and create a European network for exchanging good practices and educational innovation. At the same time, the project sought to support the personal and professional development of participants by improving their facilitation, leadership, intercultural communication, educational design and collaborative working skills. Particular attention was given to involving youth workers with fewer opportunities and those coming from rural or geographically isolated areas, enabling them to become active agents of change within their communities. Ultimately, Rural Youth Lab aimed to demonstrate that rural areas can become living laboratories for educational innovation, sustainability, youth participation and community regeneration, while contributing to a more inclusive, environmentally conscious and socially just approach to youth work across Europe.