In general, children and youth care very deeply about the well-being of animals and develop a strong relationship towards them. At the same time young people witness animal welfare issues in agriculture and entertainment industries. This is where the interest of young activists and the European Commission meet for the EU Strategy for Protection and Welfare of animals 2012 – 2015 also sees animal welfare severely compromised in the EU and consumer information and education one of the most effective means to alleviate the issue. However, such information dissemination targeting youth is largely lacking in Eastern European countries or taken over by non-governmental organisations like this project’s consortium.Therefore four youth organisations from Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia and Poland active in the field of youth participation for animal welfare, agricultural transparency, sustainable food production and consumer rights will combine their expertise to develop and carry out a European project. The objective of the project is to develop the skills and competences of youth participating as volunteers in animal protection organizations. This will be achieved by creating 48-page digital manual "Becoming Active for Animals" and organizing a blended training event for 44 young animal protection volunteers to gain new skills and knowledge necessary for active participation in the shaping of national policies regarding animal welfare and agricultural transparency. By developing a European level, different language versions (English, Lithuanian, Latvian, Estonian, Polish) are used, contents are designed inter-culturally sensitive and a systematic pan-European evaluation of the measures of the project is carried out. This project does not only promote the participation of the youth in public discourse and political decisions but also strengthens the capacity for effectiveness and efficiency within the partner organizations alike. It allows the uptake of the project results by other NGOs and youth institutions providing a facilitated transfer into their own national context. For documentation and interaction purposes an ICT-based communication infrastructure will be installed and maintained. The project comprises project management, two transnational meetings, blended 3 day online training based on contents of the project product - digital manual - and a 5 day presence training event for 44 participants. At least 5 presentations from the training event will be documented on high quality video and published online afterwards. The development of a digital manual, project web presence and file-sharing database as well as dissemination activities are all covered by the project management costs for reasons of efficiency. For the partner organisations the proposed project promises a unique, inter-cultural knowledge exchange, the exploitation of synergy effects and significant improvement in their youth work. Staff from the participating organizations will implement and run at least two meetings collecting the heads of all partners to share their experience in youth work and communicate best practice examples in a peer learning format. These activities will take place at venues of two partnering countries. To the partner organisations the enhancement of their information offers in a European context signifies the usage of synergy effects with very much alike organisations, the testing of their instruments for a target audience abroad and consequently the disclosure of a new, intercultural target audience, an internationalization of their expertise and research, a mutual enrichment by their diverse cultural and educational approaches, an exchange of best practices and a shared infrastructure. Other thematically related youth organisations and NGOs throughout Europe can use the project's results freely under the creative commons licence. Including the proposed project products into their own project portfolio allows for strengthened educational offer themselves. Knowledge actively gained through the project will then be disseminated through the organizations' national information channels, engaging in public relations and youth work nation-wide and exploiting the multiplier effect.