“Essentials of Advanced Interpersonal Skills”, a training course about how to empower and improve young people chances for employment through enhanced communication techniques and how to use communication as a power for lobbying. Interpersonal skills are especially relevant when working as leaders with young people and/or groups of youngsters: communication becomes a crucial aspect in each stage of the activities and it clearly influences the dynamics and motivation of the groups and individuals. Developed interpersonal skills are also linked to confidence and self-esteem. Interpersonal skills are the life skills we use every day to communicate and interact with other people, both individually and in groups. People who have worked on developing strong interpersonal skills are usually more successful in both their professional and personal lives. Interpersonal skills include verbal communication, non-verbal communication, listening skills, negotiation, problem solving, decision making and assertiveness. Without good interpersonal skills it is often more difficult to develop other important life skills. It seems that there is a great demand for improving personal skills as youngsters and youth leaders have no chance to acquire them in formal educational settings. With the help of this 8-day training we would like to: • raise the employability of youngsters • to improve their personal development • to develop their cooperation and negotiation skills • to generate new projects related to the topic within Erasmus+ • and to urge participants to be able to speak up and stand up for youth organisations; to improve their lobbying techniques if they are in discussion with policy-makers. Benefits of the course both at individual level and also from the perspective of your organisation: by the end of the course you will be able to • create effective working relationships with people at all levels • choose and use the most productive approach and behaviour to get the results you want • get your message across in a way that gets heard, understood, accepted and acted upon • influence others to accept your proposals • solve problems in your working relationships • be skilled how to be assertive • be skilled how to listen • increase the feeling of self-efficacy – the belief an individual has that they can reach their goal. Target group: • youth trainers/workers • youth trainers/workers who are actively working with young people as a professional or on the voluntary basis • young volunteers. All together 28 participants will be gathered in the training course, from 8 different program countries. The working methods applied in the training course reflect the needs of an internationally composed group of participants, and those requirements linked to non-formal education and youth work. Moreover, the mixture of methods is planned to allow an adequate educational flow of the training course: The applied methods will be small group discussions, workshops, simulation, role plays and jigsaw learning, inputs from expert, carrousel, theatre sketches, group building exercises, name games and icebreakers, active discovery of the venue, interviewing local population, cultural presentations organized by the participants, open space for developing own follow-up activities, daily reflections, peer learning and feedback. Hopefully, the project will help the participants to go through personal development in regard with their personality and professional competencies. The multicultural settings will provide space to reflect their own cultural background, which might open new perspectives and bring new ideas to their mind concerning their own future lives. In terms of educational outcomes of the activity, the expected impacts are: - Participants gain capacity to communicate in their daily work with youth and youth organizations; - Participants understand the effective use of their interpersonal skills and realise the power of it; -Participants develop their cooperation and negotiation skills that are essential when lobbying matters; - Participants develop their supportive communication competences and increase their leadership competences; -Participants have a clear understanding what means assertive communication and why it is so important to use adequate verbal a and non-verbal communication to establish a cooperative communication; All activities will serve the below purposes: - Participants develop their intercultural understanding; - Participants develop their capacities as project manager/leaders and gain skills to implement future actions; - Participants develop their international network of young leaders, and are connected with them for future actions. As a result, the training course will contribute the participants’ employability and also to the improved capacities of youth organisations concerning their human resources.