Frankfurt and Lyon has been operating an exchange programme that is know in its seventh year of a youth sport exchange between Frankfurt’s and Lyon’s sports clubs. With last year catering for over 300 young people from Lyon & Frankfurt taking part in a week's worth of sporting activity across 15 different sports, that were received in Frankfurt. Like the previous years, the Sportjugend Frankfurt and the Office des Sports Lyon coordinate the exchanges, organize the joint programs and support the clubs with their administrative processes.Birmingham is being twinned with Frankfurt and has been twinned with Lyon for over 60 years, to celebrate the 50th year of the relationship. Birmingham has been invited to the exchange which this year is to take place in Lyon, the idea is to pilot the opportunity with two sports clubs from Birmingham in a “trilateral” exchange. This will involve taking 21 young people total, 13-15 young people from a football club and 8 - 10 young people from a badminton club to Lyon to be given the opportunity to play and develop sport with their French and German counterparts. From france and Germany we expect to see 8 young people each country.With both clubs participating based in the inner city areas of Birmingham (Perry Barr and Ladywood districts) which are the most deprived areas of Birmingham.The sports element is used to bring young people together and will act as a driver for the youth exchange. It will enable young people to connect and begin to share ideas and skills in order to meet our wider agenda of making our young people feel more European, raise their levels of aspiration and motivation to reach their full potential. In doing so they will become our youth mentor and ambassadors in the community. This will draw the youth element out of the project empowering young people to discuss the issues they face and develop solutions together.The principle of the exchange is around building a world in which sport is an essential lever, as playful as peaceful, to bring populations together. Physical and sporting activities form a whole language with its own universal reach. The activity program for the week will not only look to develop and improve individual skill and ability around there individual sports, but will also be the conduit to developing a whole range of life skills through social inter action with other young people in different settings from different countries. The program will also look to provide learning on the culture and history of Lyon with arranged trips to key facilities in Lyon that will provide support in develop language and communication skills as well as empowering young people to develop greater feelings of being a European citizen, as they are from disadvantaged backgrounds so this will widen their knowledge of different European cultures - an opportunity they would not have had before. The visit to Lyon will also continue with the European links we have made and strengthen our work with partners. This year will be a pilot scheme with a view that each year the program will grow and develop in providing opportunities for young people by increasing the number of clubs participating, which continues to follow on from the work with International Sports and Culture Association (ISCA) These subjects directly link to the mission of the Council Business Plan 2015+ which is “Making a positive difference every day to people’s lives” and to the primary goal of “A Fair City” under the Health and Wellbeing theme “Health and wellbeing, housing quality and life expectancy are at national levels for all” and under the Children and Young People theme “young people are able to access opportunities regardless of backgrounds or special needs”.