The most valuable European capital is citizens: they own a tremendous amount of knowledge, easy-to-apply, experience-driven ideas and skills that can be to everybody’s benefit. 2011 celebrates the EU year of volunteering: in the EU, every fifth adult is engaged in voluntary work. But volunteers’ goodwill itself is not enough: that potential needs to be addressed, linked to policies. We believe that local authorities, social parts, training centres must take responsibility in this process.This proposal builds upon experience gained by Comune di Reggio Emilia (www.reggianiperesempio.comune.re.it/) and aims at collecting and putting into value good practices in active citizenship and social responsibility owned by individuals, groups, organisations.Focus is on:-training adults in key competences relating to social and civic issues;-identifying social capital of organised and informal groups;-empowering social capital;-implementing permanent dialogue among policy/decision makers at a local level.Expected output is:-devising and delivery of training pathways to improve, validate and recognise citizens’ skills relating to volunteering (active citizenship, safety and health, basics of foreign languages eg Roma,Arab,Chinese,etc.);-training kit delivered for free to minimum 600 public bodies, companies, social parts;-600 adults certified as “trained volunteers”, receiving a “Volupass” certificate, in the streamline of Youthpass;-website and community collecting people’s stories and ideas, linked to EU websites (like europa.eu/volunteering);-methodological handbook for policy makers.Foreseen impact is on citizens directly involved in project activities, expected to become trained volunteers, and on stakeholders/decision makers; these are expected to sign agreements at a local level for sustainability of results (making round tables permanent) and to share results and practices, with a view for future exchanges of trained volunteers as testimonials and trainers.