Cultural Crossroads is an international youth exchange that will take place in Ravnogor, Bulgaria from 18th until 28th May 2016. The project will bring together 36 young people (group leaders included) from 6 different countries: Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Greece, Italy, Latvia and Romania. The exchange will take 11 days during which the participants will take part in different activities and will experience different methods of non-formal education. The activities will be held in different environment – indoors and outdoors, in small or bigger groups with maximum diversity regarding nationality, gender, knowledge and experience.Main topics which will be addressed during the activities:- Effective cross-cultural communication- Stereotypes and discrimination- Acceptance and tolerance- International and intercultural cooperationDuring the exchange the organizing team together with the team leaders of every national group will organize the following types of activities:- Energizers and icebreakers – to relax the atmosphere, release possible tensions between participants (especially at the beginning of the exchange), and prepare mind and body for the program.- Activities on physical expressions and non-verbal communication – as a possibility to overcome the language barrier in different situations from our everyday life.- Social games and role playing – interactive activities where participants have ascribed certain roles and follow rules of the activity, to discover patterns of their own behavior in certain situations.- Interactive lectures – guided discussion on certain topic brought by a trainer. Sharing participants’ experience and discovering more about themselves as well as about each other.- General sharing – sharing of experience, impressions and findings during the exchange in the whole group.- Trust group meetings – conversations on different topics in smaller groups which will be formed in the beginning of the exchange and which are led by the team leaders.- Movie/video sessions – watching videos relevant to given topics.- Problem solving and team building task – activities done in smaller groups or the whole group of participants, developing cooperation skillsThe methodology used for all the mentioned activities is based on experiential learning in the inter-cultural environment. We use tools of non-formal education, based on „learning by doing” approach. All the participants will therefore take an active part in the project by contributing with their experience and by adopting responsible and proactive attitude during the exchange that they will consequently apply back home. Our aim is to involve the participants fully during the exchange, to take ownership of their learning and the content of the exchange, to be engaged physically, mentally and emotionally.The main method that will be used and brings a difference as a newly developed set of tools is the so called 'spectrum method'. It has been developed be Olde Vechte Foundation, Ommen, the Netherlands, and has its framed dissemination through a project which is still on-going: 2014-2-NL02-KA105-000635 Spectrum, a synergy venture to combat youth unemployment. It is widely used method in the International Synergy Network and has its place in the on-line world here: https://www.facebook.com/SpectrumSynergyIt is highly experiential method which combines tools and approaches from different areas of social, community and individual work. Of course, it has been tested and proved to be a powerful new approach in the past 8-10 years, making a difference compared to outdated methods for non-formal education and work in a group learning setting. Synergy Bulgaria has been taking an active role in the development and adaptation of the spectrum method for spreading it widely in the NGO sector in Europe and not only in the past two years. In 2015 we implemented it for first time in a international context in Bulgaria during the project SynergyCoach 2014-2-BG01-KA105-001413.