The “Sports Without Borders” project is a strategic professional development initiative designed to support youth organisations in transitioning from traditional athletic coaching models to pedagogically grounded, inclusive youth work practices. The project aims to equip 40 youth workers from Germany, Croatia, Cyprus, and Serbia with a specialised non-formal education toolkit that uses 3x3 basketball and adventure-based learning as structured methods to address social exclusion and adolescent dropout. From a youth work perspective, the project focuses on methodological professionalisation by training youth workers to deconstruct and adapt sports rules, particularly within the 3x3 format, so that physical activity becomes an accessible and inclusive learning environment for refugees, rural youth, and young people with learning differences. At the institutional level, the project strengthens quality development by explicitly linking individual learning outcomes to organisational change, requiring participants to embed inclusive sport-based methodologies into the permanent annual action plans of their home organisations. In parallel, the project builds concrete capacity for youth retention by equipping youth workers with competencies to recognise early signs of disengagement and to use sport as a tool for resilience building, mental well-being, and a sense of belonging. A further core objective is the creation of open educational resources through the co-authorship of a digital Inclusion Toolkit that documents tested practices in sport-based non-formal education and is made publicly available via the SALTO-YOUTH platform for the wider European youth work field. Throughout all activities, the project integrates green and digital youth work principles by applying zero-waste event protocols and digital documentation tools, contributing to the twin green and digital transition in line with European policy priorities. The project is implemented as a blended learning journey consisting of three interconnected phases. It begins with a digital preparatory lab comprising three virtual working days, during which participants engage in thematic onboarding, intercultural team building, and joint mapping of local exclusion and dropout challenges across the partner regions. This is followed by Training Course 01 in Germany, a seven-day physical mobility focused on the logistics of inclusion, where participants explore refugee integration models and practice the foundational adaptation of sport-based non-formal education methods in an urban context. The learning process is then deepened through Training Course 02 in Croatia, an seven-day mobility dedicated to innovation and youth retention, centred on 3x3 basketball and adventure-based learning. In this phase, youth workers test and refine their co-created inclusion tools in real-life settings such as schools and local clubs and finalise their local multiplier action plans for post-project implementation. The expected results of the project are multi-layered. Youth workers will acquire eight core professional competencies aligned with the European Training Strategy competence model, particularly in facilitating learning and designing inclusive processes, with these outcomes formally validated through Youthpass. Participating organisations will experience a permanent upgrade in service quality through the formal adoption of the Inclusion Toolkit into internal training manuals and a measurable increase in the participation of young people with fewer opportunities in their regular activities. At sector level, the project will contribute an open-access digital toolkit and a series of practical “how-to” video tutorials published on the Erasmus Plus Results Platform, offering a scalable and transferable model for inclusive sports-based youth work across Europe. At community level, at least 160 young people across the four partner countries will directly benefit from higher-quality, more inclusive sports activities delivered during the follow-up and multiplication phase, strengthening social cohesion and local youth engagement beyond the project lifetime.