For the first time, Emmaus vzw from Belgium and Styrktarfélag lamaðra og fatlaðra (SLF) from Iceland will organize a Youth Exchange with 18 participants of each country, 36 in total. A growing number of youngsters wrestle with emotional, behavioral and psychological difficulties: borderline, suicides, eating disorders, school drop out, aggression, auto-mutilation, depression or anti-social behavior. Everyone knows somebody in his network of friends, family or work. Complicated life and family circumstances, with often an unsafe attachment with their parents and/or traumatic experiences, contribute in an important part to mental, emotional and behavior problems. These are the youngster we like to do a youth exchange with. Vulnerable youth at risk between 14 and 21 years old.These youngsters, too, have the need and benefit a lot from doing ‘normal’, fun and empowering activities or ‘camps’ that stimulate their development. We believe that informal, experiential programs can have a important (preventive) impact on their development by building emotional intelligence and resilience: awareness and confidence in themselves and others, positive learning from and dealing with (sometimes challenging) experiences and emotions.Our most important goal is to offer this youngsters, that don't often get the chance, the possibility to participate in an empowering and intercultural group exchange with youngsters from another country and with another culture. We want to help and support our vulnerable youngsters to broaden their own personal borders and possibilities: competences, new ways of interacting with others and handling emotions and building resilience.We also want to broaden their cultural borders and world, get to know new people with the same or other ways of living and thinking. We want to stimulate them to come out of their known and comfortable 'homeplace" (comfortzone) to experience new inspiring possibilities to grow. The project will be a long and intensive trajectory, in which the youngsters and groups leaders of both countries will take turns as host and guest of 2 Youth Exchanges. First, Iceland will host an 10 day Youth Exchange(5-16/7/2016). Afterwards Belgium will invite the Icelandic participants for a 9 days Youth Exchange (29/10-6/11/2016) .And, the project is more for us than only these 2 Activities. Before, in between and after we want to meet regularly with the youngsters on the national level. We do this to prepare the intercultural experience, getting to know each other, team building and training necessary outdoor skills and getting to know the outdoor gear. Through the whole project we choose for the same group of Icelandic and Belgian youngsters and group leaders. The 2 Activities in Iceland and Belgium exists of games (energizers, icebreakers, etc.), outdoor activities (like hiking,orienteering, sleeping outside,making campfire, group expedition, climbing, caving, cooking on stoves, enjoying and experiencing nature, etc), group exercises, body work and forum theater. Our non-formal and informal learning methods are active and creative review techniques, group discussions, workshops, personal reflection moments (like solos) and individual talks with group leaders or a psychologist. In all these activities and reflection moments we will use experiential learning, adventure therapy and group dynamics learning methods.We expect that the program will have a strong impact on the learning and growing process of the youngsters and the development of the group and the group leaders. We hope that the youngsters will, for a long period, be able to extract force, self knowledge, and self confidence for their future life from this intercultural experience.We also expect a positive impact on the cohabitation in the residential homes where our youngsters live. A feeling of pride for having reached something together and a greater engagement in our organizations. There will also be a serious impact on the level of our working methods and organization.On the local and national level, we want to raise awareness and show the potential of experiential education and adventure therapy to include youngsters at risk in non-formal education activities and programs. On an European level we want to create a network of organizations willing to actively organize youth exchanges. A network that keeps exchanging experience and expertise on organizing and leading youth exchanges for youth at risk, using experiential learning and adventure therapy methods.