“Sports, leisure activities … and even paid entertainment allow individuals to manage their free time without constraints. Even in difficult situations, these activities give young people the opportunity to entertain themselves, to relax, to play, and to find cultural enrichment. … [These] activities give young people the possibility of self-expression, personal fulfillment, and personal development as an individual and as a member of a group. In addition, sports and leisure activities can raise awareness in young people that can inspire them to contribute to the improvement of their living conditions through volunteerism.”
— Dakar Youth Empowerment Strategy.(World Youth Forum of the United Nations System, hosted by the Government of Senegal in cooperation with the United Nations, gathered in Dakar from 6 to 10 August 2001)
Young people are the present and the future of Europe. We are now committed to providing our youth enriching leisure activities for them to achieve social, emotional, vocational, physical, cognitive, and civic development. These positive outcomes will have an impact on both personal and community development.
Broadly speaking, leisure time is for young people a period of time when they choose what they want to do with people they want to be with. In many cases, free time is thought as an opportunity for problem behaviour—as the time when young people get in trouble, roam the streets, engage in risky sexual behaviour and watch too much television. Concerns about potential risks during leisure hours are valid. However, it could be an opportunity to play, relax and learn—not learning in the formal, academic sense, but no less critical than the learning that goes on inside schools. Leisure time is also an opportunity for play and recreation—for self-expression and relaxation, and for young people to exercise their emerging self-control.  Finally, leisure time is the context in which young people can discover themselves as contributors and change-makers, as participants in the development of their communities and societies.

In many countries, the hours in the day when young people are not at school or engaged in household tasks are considered optional—nice but not necessary, or even particularly important. It is imperative that youth be given a wide range of opportunities and it is the aim of the project to focus on three main topics:

• Physical activity and use and enjoyment of the natural environment: Prevention of sedentary lifestyle by practicing any kind of outdoors physical activity, individually or in teams. The added physical and psychological benefits of undertaking physical activity in the natural environment is to reconnect students with nature.

• Culture: Approach to any cultural or artistic manifestation: Get the students to know the fine arts, literature, poetry and playwriting. Languages, European traditions and customs and travel.

• Active citizenship: volunteering: Promote students’ engagement and participation in associational life by giving something back to the community or make a difference to the people around them.

As for the international partnership, the project should also stimulate students to use acquired class knowledge (foreign languages, ICT, content subjects, oral skills, etc.) in real life. Thus, making them aware of the importance of their commitment with their own learning process. The intercultural links with the countries involved in the project will also be strengthened. 

The recognition that leisure time and opportunities constitute a right to be protected rather than a privilege to be earned or lost is the starting point of this project. 

Our work will try to locate leisure time and activities within a bigger picture of what young people need and can do. There are differences in the way young people enjoy their free time in Europe, but the threats are more or less the same. Most of the times, the activities designed and offered to young people to distract them from risky behavior are related to sport, which is great. There have been a lot of successful experiences like that in previous European Projects, but for the first time, we want to offer our students the opportunity of choosing or combining different options which enhance young people's ability to confront their free time by offering them something more.

The overall objective is to offer a series of alternative leisure time activities of a cultural, service to community, or sport nature. The implemented activities will meet a series of requirements: they must be fun and allow for relationship with other European youngsters.

We want to focus our project on the work of our younger and older secondary pupils. Our pupils are of different age (13-19 years) and have different abilities. The tasks of the project we have worked out make it possible to involve all of them in our project. Working together in a common project, the idea of Europe is no longer an abstraction. They will get insight in life and way of thinking of pupils and teachers living in countries all over Europe. If applicable, they will be living in host families during mobilites, so that students will gain an authentic impression of the daily life of the host family, to get to know the customs, traditions and even the language. It will be a chance for them to realize that they are a part of Europe and that they can learn from each other. They will experience that they share many common things and realize the differences. This will be very important for their personal development and it will not be fulfilled outside an international cooperation.

Sharing experiences, impressions of the different European lifestyles and values, will offer youngsters the opportunity to empathize with each other and increase tolerance whilst reducing discrimination, prejudice and stereotyping which could not be achieved at this intensity by working in isolation in individual schools in each country. They will find out that there are young people in every European country with similar values and problems. By interacting with peers in other European countries, by reaching agreement concerning the work being done, everyone will acquire entrepreneurial skills which is a national priority in several partner countries. Besides that, each partner school will be exposed to other languages and cultures. The project also allows the authentic use of English as a lingua franca. By interacting in fields of culture, media, ICT, social sciences, etc. project participants will improve their language skills and will be motivated to pursue further enhancement of the English language; which in itself will intensify European cooperation. Furthermore, the project can raise motivation to learn other languages.
Adapting ICT when it comes to producing and presenting material, documentation and interaction, provides students with an authentic possibility to become multi media experts.
The project will develop our pupils' communicative and social flexibility because of working together in a common project and because of experiences gained on mobilities. The mobility activities will also help our colleagues to learn more about other European countries. At each project meeting the partners will present their school system and training-for-the-job system to the visiting teachers and pupils.
Working and celebrating together will strengthen the bond between all partner schools of this project and beyond it. It shall be a motivation for others - not only schools - to try the same.