“Volunteering for knowledge" is a Training Course (TC) that will deal with the importance of volunteering as a tool for acquiring new skills and knowledge. This TC will be held in Sofia, Bulgaria. Duration: 6 full working days activities, August 09-16, 2015. The countries involved in the project are the following: Bulgaria, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Spain, 4 participants per country - in total 41 participants. The overall aim of the project is to empower young people/youth workers with the innovative way of acquiring skills and knowledge, using volunteering. The main target group will be focused on volunteering in sports, as an innovative approach to involve more young people to have real working skills and provide them with more employability opportunities. The transfer of good practices between western and eastern European countries, living the good examples during the TC will empower the fight with youth unemployment by creating opportunities for self-employment and employment through volunteering. Bulgaria seemed to all the partners the best place in which to implement the project since it represents a perfect learning environment for participants and coincides with need in the Bulgarian society of activities for promotion of volunteering, sports and active living. Regarding to this specific educational need, carry out with this project means share new tools strengthening our cooperation and explore new areas of youth policy development, based on the priority of increasing voluntary actions in the societies. Target group: young people, social workers, youth workers, youth leaders who have experience in volunteers or sport activities or who like to raise their knowledge in volunteering as a tool for education. Learning objectives of the TC are: - To raise knowledge and gain new experiences on volunteering and volunteering in sports as tools of recognition of skills and knowledge; - To clarify the challenges of volunteering in sports regarding to content and methodology, non formal and informal learning process, intercultural learning and impact on local community; - To create a network of professionals (youth leaders, social workers and Trainers) who work with unemployed young people and people with fewer opportunities using volunteering as a tool for education and ready to develop new E+ projects raising awareness on personal, social and professional development during the work activity. - Developing the potential for young people within education and employment. The working method proposed by the Trainers will start from a wider point of view, macro areas such as values, education and intercultural dialogue through volunteering and volunteering in sport, to the specific activities such as tools and methods to be held during the daily working life in every young people, NGOs or youth centers when you can make the difference for building a civic society (bottom-up process). Volunteering is one of the basic shapes of active participation in the society and it has to be implemented in the current situation as an effective tool to gain skills and knowledge that will make the young people more competitive at the labour market. Sport has an educational dimension and plays a social, cultural and recreational role. Combining these two topics, we will raise the ability of the young people involved to find their future realization and develop themselves in order to be active members of the local community. Therefore the values of volunteering and sports are fundamental in the third sector’s working processes, where this topics can be used in order to prevent the sense of intolerance, social exclusion and marginalization. The TC will follow the non formal education approach: a combination of different creative and interactive methods will be used by the Trainers team and adapted upon the profile of participants. Some examples of working methods: theoretical inputs, round table, Compass/Salto sessions, individual/group activities, group exercises, work on examples in a small group, case studies, real attempts. The Trainers will establish a theoretical framework and common reference points for learning and communication in this course, and the course methodology foresees direct involvement of the organisations which already work on the topic and that will be present at the TC.