The project Empathy Journalists aims to strengthen the ability of youth workers to respond to one of today’s key challenges: young people’s disengagement from civic life and increasing polarisation in society. Many young people describe politics as something distant, hostile or “just drama,” while others adopt rigid positions that can fuel exclusion and radicalisation. Youth workers are often in direct contact with these young people but lack concrete tools to guide them into constructive dialogue. The aims of the project are: 1. To equip youth workers with NVC tools that support civic dialogue and engagement. 2. To introduce the Empathy Journalist approach where youth workers help young people explore social and political issues through emotions, needs, and constructive solutions that allows us to see human beings even behind inhumane actions. 3. To empower youth workers to help young people become more active at local, regional, national, and European levels, by using empathy-based communication. 4. To strengthen youth participation in democratic life by enabling young people to express their voices with clarity and compassion. 5. To develop the skill of holding empathic space when needs or opinions do not match, and learn how two people can still stay connected in the middle of disagreement or conflict. 6. To build the capacity to grieve unmet needs, so youth workers learn to accept when things cannot be resolved in the way they wish, and still continue dialogue with openness and empathy, so to model and teach this to young people. 7. To build a network of youth workers who can spread these approaches within their organizations and communities, multiplying the impact across Europe. After the training, youth workers will be able to run empathy circles in schools, facilitate debates around elections without polarisation, and guide young people to have dialogue with community leaders with curiosity instead of judgement. They will also be able to model how to accept situations where a need cannot be met, and still treat others with humanity. This skill is vital in todays divided world, where connection must continue even when we disagree on values, beliefs, or strategies.