The GIRL Youth Exchange aims to empower disadvantaged young women and girls (aged 16–25) to become active agents of change by creating a safe, international learning space where they can exchange lived experiences of gender inequality, explore feminist leadership practices, and co-design responses to challenges in their local communities. From a youth work perspective, the project pursues the following objectives: - to increase young women’s self-confidence, self-awareness and capacity for self-expression by creating a safe learning environment where participants can critically reflect on gender norms and experiment with leadership roles. - to to strengthen participants’ civic competences by equipping them with knowledge and practical tools to address gender inequality and actively contribute to their local communities. This objective directly supports Youth Goal #2 (Equality of All Genders) and Youth Goal #3 (Inclusive Societies) - to strengthen the quality and gender-sensitivity of youth work practice within partner organisations. By testing and systematising inclusive and empowerment-oriented methodologies, the project contributes to organisational learning and long-term capacity building. - to enhance key transversal competences relevant for active citizenship and employability, including communication, teamwork, problem-solving, initiative-taking and intercultural understanding. These competences are developed through experiential and participatory non-formal education methodologies. - to promote European solidarity and intercultural dialogue by bringing together young women from diverse backgrounds to exchange perspectives, challenge stereotypes and build transnational networks of support. The project intentionally models quality youth work in line with the Erasmus Youth Quality Standards: it ensures meaningful participation, structured reflection, inclusive facilitation, safeguarding, and recognition of learning outcomes. The educational design follows a logical progression from trust-building and awareness-raising to skills development and action planning, ensuring coherence between objectives, activities and expected results. The project responds to the persistent underrepresentation of young women - especially those from low socio-economic, rural, or otherwise marginalised backgrounds- in decision-making processes. Many young women face structural and intersecting barriers that limit their access to leadership opportunities, weaken their confidence in expressing opinions, and reduce their participation in democratic life. The Youth Exchange directly addresses these challenges by placing young women at the centre of the learning process, recognising their experiences as valid knowledge, and supporting peer-to-peer learning across national contexts. The exchange will bring together 30 young women from different countries, each partner organisation involving participants with fewer opportunities as a priority. Through a 5-day residential Youth Exchange hosted in Belgium, participants will engage in a progressive learning journey based on non-formal education, feminist pedagogy, and experiential methods. The programme is designed to move from trust-building and mutual understanding, through collective exploration of power, leadership and decision-making, towards the co-creation of concrete ideas for local action. Rather than transmitting predefined knowledge, the exchange emphasises learning with and from each other. Participants will compare realities from their countries, reflect on how gender-based discrimination manifests in different social and cultural contexts, and experiment with inclusive leadership models through simulations, role-play, applied theatre, and collective decision-making tools. This international dimension strengthens European solidarity, challenges stereotypes, and reinforces the sense of belonging to a wider community of young women facing similar structural challenges. A key outcome of the Youth Exchange is the strengthening of participants’ confidence, agency, critical thinking and decision-making competences. By the end of the exchange, participants will have co-developed individual or small-group action ideas responding to needs identified in their communities, understood as learning outcomes rather than obligations. Learning achievements will be recognised through Youthpass, supporting the validation of competences acquired through non-formal learning. In line with Erasmus+ priorities, the project strongly contributes to inclusion and diversity, participation in democratic life, and gender equality, while ensuring a safe, supportive environment where young women can express themselves freely, reflect critically, and envision their role as leaders starting from their local contexts.