Above all, we want young people who experience this exchange to gain awareness of the political contexts of their neighbors, as well as to confront their own contexts and learn to discuss them, encounter polarization and conflict, and learn to navigate them. Our aim is to learn through action what it means to be inclusionary of diversity, which incorporates consciously addressing real conflicts in Europe and finding ways of embracing all worldviews, while simultaneously cooperating on creating new ways of communicating and working together. We don’t want to pretend to be homogenous, but rather understand our differences and choose to work for common goals anyway. We also want to empower participants to bring positive change to their communities and encourage them to become exemplary citizens of the wider European community. We want to build and strengthen existing political and social networks and organizations that work on issues such as the ecological crisis, anti-EU messaging, the difficulties faced by the LQBTQIA+ community, and art as a tool for driving political and social change. We also want participants to leave this YE understanding how climate change is linked to the political and social challenges we’re facing. Participants will have learned practical ways to be mindful of ecology (through the experience of living in an ecovillage with people who care deeply about the environment and non-human beings), gaining awareness of their scripts and behaviors that may not serve them in their lives and work, as well as awareness of the privileges they have and how they can best use them. We also want participants to gain knowledge about their gifts and soft skills that they bring to the group, so that when they return, they can contribute to their communities. We will equip youth with mental-health and nervous system knowledge that they can use personally and share with other youth. We want to unleash the creativity and spirit of fun, joy, and spontaneity among participants so that they can discover their “inner artist” and passionately infect others with their sensitivity, which will also support wellbeing among social changes. On an even broader level, we want this project to serve as a model for other youth groups and organizations dealing with these issues and topics. We are committed to developing an effective strategy for working with social change, which requires not only the right tools and implementation, but also “soft skills” – internal, emotional, and group work, without which, in our opinion, we will not be able to meet the challenges of today's world. We want there to be as many projects as possible that focus on stimulating sensitivity, creativity, empathy, and agency. By implementing this project, we hope that it will inspire others to do similar work. To elaborate a little further, it is very important for us to bring together activist, artistic, environmental, and political actions and communities. We believe that these communities must work together if we want to achieve meaningful social change. With this project, we want to bring these diverse communities together, giving them the opportunity to engage in dialogue and exchange ideas, tools, and valuable knowledge, for the benefit of all. As for our objectives, they are as follows: - strengthening CEE solidarity which is based on the similar histories of our countries and cultures; - uniting European youth in one place to enable cultural and social exchange; - establishing strong partnerships which empower each other to begin or continue actions toward change; - learning ways of coping with hardships and conflict in ways that support our wellbeing and our local communities in our home countries; - acquiring and sharing deep and extensive social knowledge that can enable conscious political participation that includes and respects all perspectives and experiences; - creating a network of cooperation that works mutually towards shared European values that extend the time constraints of this Youth Exchange; - exchanging somatic, emotional, spiritual, intellectual practises that support resilient action; - learning about living in a community and what communities can teach us about the necessary skills which enable effective social cooperation; - gaining and expanding our awareness of the climate crisis, ecological sustainability, and ways of implementing ecological change; - supporting ourselves and other youth amongst growing climate and political anxiety, depression, isolation; - researching and creating new skills and approaches inspired by scientific, Indigenous and non-Indigenous approaches towards relationships with nature, and how this is connected to socio-political systems; - facilitating access to Erasmus+ Programmes for people with economic or social disadvantages, especially those in Eastern Europe.