We have a large experience working with volunteers. We are working with Romanian volunteers all around the year. They participate on our programs, get suggestions and are mentored by the program director of the organization. We have this working system for 20 years. We had almost each year some volunteers, either from Peace Corps, USA or students, Grundvig assistants from other European countries. We believe that having volunteers helps both, our organization and offers also possibility for young people from abroad to get to know new people and the Romanian culture and to gain experience in the field of outdoor/ experiential education. This is a win-win situation, a mutual connection. Our organization, out staff can get a new perspective, another European, working perspective what comes with every new person in an organizations life but especially in this case when the person comes from another country. We wish to carry out this project because we think that young people in Middle and Eastern Europe have difficulties for getting hired, because without skills and practice you have less chance, because we think that they should have given more opportunities to get developed and skilled. The EVS project, entitled Stepping Outdoors, will be organized by Outward Bound Romania –hosting and coordinating organization- in partnership with the Hungarian Élményakademia Közhasznú Egyesület -sending- and the Slovak INEX -sending- organizations. The project will be running between the 1st of August 2014 and 30th of March 2016 with the participation of 2 volunteers from Hungary and Slovakia. One of them would do volunteering at our organization between 1st of September 2014 till 30th of May 2015 and the other person the 1st of June 2015 till the 28th of February 2016. The objectives of our project are: - to involve volunteers from Europe in our activities (for periods of 9 months) - to support volunteers to gain skills in the field of outdoor education and project-management - to develop employability of volunteers - motivate young people for being active in the civic life - to share good practices in the field of experiential education/outdoor techniques/personal development techniques - to promote volunterism - to promote European values We work in the field of experiential education using outdoor techniques, ropes course activities, interactive games and activities, debriefing methods which represents a very effective non-formal education method in personal development and it is a great method in reaching many other learning goals in the participants life and personality. The volunteers will do their service mainly in Sovata where we organize most of our programs and where we run our International Youth Center and we organize outdoor programs all around the year, there they they will be helping with preparing, organizing, implementing and assissting on our programs and camps. In 2013 we had 2557 participants on our programs. The activities of the volunteers: in our office they will be involved in different administrative tasks and in the Youth Center in Sovata, he will fill in the role of assistant instructor and project co-cordination. The goal of the project is to challenge young people to actively get involved in the societies life and to become active citizens. Impact of our project: The volunteers participating in our project will gain many skills -soft skills in working with people and groups, children and adult, and technical skills, regarding the use of ropes courses, acvatic programs - during their service in the field outdoor education, their chance of getting job. The organizations participating in the project will get enriched with new perspectives. We will gain motivation and new possibilities to estabilish new partnerships among the partner organizations. The groups we are working with will get to know a person from a different cultural background, form a different country, this way we will get a stronger impact on their personality. The diversity and the colourful impulses are all helping the participants to develop their personality and their attitude. Not least the language competences of the participants will increase, in the case of the Slovak participants probably the common language will be English. On long term in our local community we get new perspectives, we get closer contact with the partner organization, we develop our ogranizational culture this way having better and bigger impact on the local comunity and on our participants on the programs we organize.