The objective of the project is to develop the skills and competences of youth participating as volunteers in animal rights organizations. This will be achieved by organizing a gathering for young animal rights volunteers for sharing skills and knowledge. With the growing public concern about animal welfare issues, a need arises to develop the key competences, skills and knowledge of animal welfare and animal rights volunteers, to enable them to better address these issues in the society and work for a cause that is important to many young people in Europe. Thus there arises a need for a gathering organized by youth to share, through informal learning methods, the skills and knowledge relating to volunteer work in the field of animal rights. We intend to organize a youth exchange, which will take the form of a gathering of Baltic animal rights volunteers with the objective of sharing skills and knowledge and developing the competences of the participating youth necessary to better protect animal welfare across the Baltics and participate actively in civil society. In addition, exchange of culture-specific information related to different countries is encouraged. It is planned also to analyze the attitudes of each societies towards animal welfare and come up with ideas to overcome the challenges posed by these attitudes. The gathering will also focus on environmental aspects and try to have as low ecological footprint as practically possible. Throughout the project, an active involvement of participants will be encouraged. The participants will be 40 young volunteers active in the animal rights field from different Baltic countries, mostly aged 18-25. The gathering will include several days filled with different presentations, workshops, knowledge-sharing and informal learning methods such as role-playing situations, as well as introductory and social activities for volunteers to get to know each other and different cultures better. The venue will be Laulasmaa Puhkekeskus, a camping site not far from Tallinn. The gathering is planned to take place from 25-30 of June 2015. The countries involved will be Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Finland. The desired impact is to develop the competences and empower the participants involved and enable them to better achieve their goals as volunteers in animal rights organizations. It will also help volunteers to develop personally, e.g. in terms of skills. On a local level, this will increase citizen participation in civil society, since effective and active organizations attract more volunteers. Another positive impact is to increase the public awareness of animal welfare issues. Since this is an important issue for many young people, raising the public consciousness about it can help young people to feel they have contributed to the society and fulfilled some of their personal aspirations.