Project WATER (Working Around Trauma with Embodied Resources) aims to strengthen the quality, safety, and innovativeness of youth work in contexts where youth workers engage with young people who have experiences of trauma, violence, and social exclusion. The project is based on a clearly identified need for professionally grounded yet non-clinical approaches that enable youth workers to provide ethical, safe, and effective support to young people who often cannot or do not wish to express their experiences verbally. The core purpose of the project is to equip youth workers with practical, arts-based and embodied tools that complement traditional verbal methods of youth work and enable more inclusive, trauma-informed, and culturally sensitive work with young people with fewer opportunities. In doing so, the project directly contributes to the development of youth work that responds to contemporary societal challenges such as war, forced migration, prolonged insecurity, environmental crises, and the resulting psychosocial distress experienced by young people. From a youth work perspective, the project pursues the following key objectives: 1. To strengthen the professional competences of youth workers for trauma-informed youth work. The project seeks to enhance youth workers’ ability to recognise bodily, emotional, and behavioural responses to trauma and to create safe, supportive, and non-retraumatising spaces within non-formal learning environments. A particular emphasis is placed on clearly understanding the boundaries between youth work and therapeutic practice. 2. To broaden the range of youth work methods through arts-based and embodied approaches. Through the SensArticulate methodology, the project introduces movement, somatic practices, voice work, visual arts, and symbolic expression as legitimate methods within youth work. This approach enables the inclusion of young people who are often not reached by language-based programmes, particularly those with migrant or refugee backgrounds. 3. To strengthen cultural sensitivity and intercultural competences in youth work. The project promotes an understanding that expressions of trauma are culturally shaped and equips youth workers with knowledge and tools for working in diverse cultural and gender contexts, while consistently respecting consent, personal boundaries, and ethical standards. 4. To contribute to the prevention of secondary traumatisation and burnout among youth workers. The project systematically integrates self-care, bodily regulation, reflection, and peer support, thereby strengthening the long-term sustainability of youth work practice and the professional well-being of youth workers. 5. To create transferable and sustainable outcomes for the wider youth work sector. The project will develop a methodological handbook and a community of practice that will enable the project’s impact to extend beyond the duration of the mobility. The acquired knowledge and tools will be transferred by youth workers into their organisations, local communities, and future Erasmus+ projects. Through these objectives, Project WATER contributes to the development of youth work that is more responsive to the real-life circumstances of young people, more inclusive of vulnerable groups, and more sustainable for youth workers themselves. In this way, it strengthens the role of youth work as a key space for support, learning, and social inclusion in contemporary Europe.