"From Training to Leadership" was a KA153-YOU Erasmus+ mobility of youth workers project implemented between August 2025 and May 2026 by five partner organisations from Romania, Spain, Turkey, Lithuania and North Macedonia: ACAEDA — Asociația Culturală Atelierul European de Artă (applicant organisation, Bucharest), ASSOCIACIÓ Globers (Spain), Pangea Youth Association (Turkey), Central European Trainers — CET (Lithuania) and Organization for Social Inclusion and Lifelong Learning — NECI (North Macedonia). The project originated from a shared need identified across all five partner organisations through a joint needs analysis process conducted before the application. Despite coming from different national contexts, the youth workers in our organisations faced remarkably similar professional challenges: they lacked confidence in leading and coordinating groups of young people, struggled to manage conflicts and team dynamics effectively, and felt they needed both theoretical knowledge and practical non-formal tools to grow as leaders. Many of them were relatively new to the field and, while highly motivated, did not yet have the skills or structured support to reach their full potential as youth work leaders. To address these needs in a structured, impactful, and intercultural way, we designed a 10-month project built around a 7-day residential training course held in Bucharest, attended by 25 youth workers, complemented by a comprehensive preparation phase and a 6-month post-mobility dissemination and mentoring phase. The project pursued three core objectives. The first was to equip the 25 participating youth workers with at least three key leadership skills — decision-making, emotional intelligence, and effective time management — so that they could manage themselves and their teams with greater confidence and clarity. The second was to help participants acquire solid knowledge of three essential aspects of leadership in youth work practice: communication, conflict resolution, and group management, providing them with concrete methods they could apply immediately in their daily work with young people. The third objective was to strengthen participants' motivation and self-confidence so that they would, upon returning to their communities, take on more leadership responsibilities, organise more and better-quality activities for young people, and contribute actively to the development of their organisations. Beyond the individual learning outcomes of the 25 participants, the project also aimed to create two lasting outputs: a comprehensive project brochure documenting the methods, learning outcomes, and good practices developed during the training, and a short artistic video reflecting on the importance of values-driven leadership for youth. Both outputs were designed to be shared widely at the European level, reaching youth workers and organisations beyond the five partner countries. Throughout the 10 months, the project also sought to build a stronger, more connected partnership between the five organisations, laying the groundwork for future collaboration and joint Erasmus+ initiatives — and to demonstrate to the broader youth work community that investing in leaders is the most effective way to invest in young people.