The organisations “Soinu Ttiki” and “Dún Uladh” are preparing for a Cultural Youth Exchange in the Basque Country, France which will take place at the end of August when the Basque Country is alive with festivals celebrating our traditional culture. The exchange will involve as mentioned a group from Omagh, Tyrone who are involved with Comhaltas Ceoltóirí Éireann and a second group from the Basque Country. The exchange will involve 18 young Irish people who will go with their six leaders (music, dance, teachers and general leaders), to meet young Basque people around the same age. As well as that the Irish group will involve the 18 young people that came to Ireland last year and their 4 leaders and music teachers. This exchange of cultural and musical knowledge will enable young people to become responsible EUROPEAN CITIZENS who are aware of both the differences and similarities between these two cultures and how this diversity offers rich cultural awareness. Indeed, this exchange encourages: the youth to open their minds to other cultures and learning tolerance. It develops: autonomy and promotes the appearance of musicians involved in their culture and the important role all these people play in promoting their minority cultures. This project started last year and we expect this reciprocal exchange to make the learning outcomes even stronger and to strengthen the bonds between the young people and the leaders. The main them of the project is promotion of minority culture and music within Europe and sub-themes which are linked to this and which will come through as part of the project are: -Foster MUTUAL UNDERSTANDING between young people in different countries through looking at the links between their music and culture. -develop solidarity and promote TOLERANCE among young people. This will be facilitated through the exchange itself, all activities involved will help the young people and leaders to see how solidarity can be built between two cultures and how tolerance of others and their culture can open your mind to the richness of your own culture as well as other cultures. -promote young people's ACTIVE CITIZENSHIP - this will be facilitated through the exchange directly as these young people will see what can be learned and experienced through becoming active in various projects. -promote EUROPEAN COOPERATION in the youth field - the young people and especially the leaders will see clearly how important it is to influence young people at an early age on the positive aspects mentioned above and how European Cooperation at this level can open up so many opportunities to do this. You can preach to young people about the importance of tolerance and being active citizens but the lessons will be better learned and maintained if learned through experience and where better to learn than through practicing tolerance with a culturally different group to your own and through common interests! Our objectives are that we will enjoy a fulfilling and thoroughly enjoyable exchange which will both formally and informally teach our young people valuable lessons based around the importance of promoting and maintaining minority culture and music. The activities implemented will be based around informal learning and learning through experience and the methods applied to achieve these aims will be similar - informal. All methods will be through practice, do it don't preach it, experience it, see for yourself and we hope that this kind of experience will stay with the participants longer than if they were to sit in a classroom and be told about it.