With this EVS project Sail Training Association Netherlands (STAN) wishes to aim for two objectives: To give the volunteers (age 21 and over) the chance to personally develop themselves, and to create yet another possibility for both the STAN and its partner organizations to share knowledge, which will improve the work and projects of all partners. STAN and its network of roughly 15 European partner organizations have been organizing Erasmus+ Youth Exchanges for over 10 years. Forming a partnership with other organizations and working together with people linked to those for a year, forms an excellent opportunity to share knowledge, working methods and best practices with each other. Meaning that through this EVS project, STAN and it’s people can learn from the volunteers’ their experience in projects of our partners, just as much as they will be learning from their stay with us.With this EVS project, we would like to offer a youngster from Sweden, the United Kingdom, Finland and Poland the chance to help us organize and execute projects like these exchanges and other sail training voyages. When working with us, the volunteers will be involved in all stages (preparation, execution and evaluation) of our projects, all set up for youngsters age 15 to 25 from all different backgrounds. This means the variety in tasks is immense. Possible tasks range from writing Erasmus+ funding applications for Youth Exchange (and other fundraising), to selecting the participants for these and other projects, PR and social media/website editing, going on sail training voyages as a mentor or volunteer crew, helping the ships prepare for their sailing season, and so on. The volunteer can therefor discover what type of tasks suits him or her best, discover hidden talents and develop new competences. STAN works with experiential learning methods and a special coaching method, which is designed towards maximizing human potential. This coaching will give the volunteers tools they can use the rest of their lives. By aiming for youngsters with disadvantaged social-economic background, we additionally offer them a chance to gain valuable and diverse work experience. We would prefer to work with youngsters that have experience in tall ship sailing, working with youngsters (mentorship) or in youth projects. This way, they can compare our methods and projects to the ones they are used to ‘back home’, this will not only teach them a lot, but will also mean our organization and our people can learn a lot from them.The impact on the youngsters that will come work with STAN as an EVS volunteer will be huge. We know from experience that joining a sail training vessel for a couple of weeks has a profound impact on youngsters, and these volunteers will do exactly that, multiple times ànd will work with us in the office, be coached, etcetera. Furthermore, they are living in another country, in a city with a lot to offer and within a culture they are not familiar with. They will be trained to be a mentor, work on ships, and so on. The volunteers will develop new skills and competences, gain knowledge on project managements, and are very likely to experience a great shift in their attitude towards taking on challenges, how to be successful and, additionally, how to bring about this shift in other youngsters. It will truly be a life changing experience.