The global economic crisis has hit Greece especially hard. After seven difficult years, the economy is finally growing again, but Greek society has far from fully recovered. On top of these economic challenges, Greece was tested because of its geography. Positioned at the south-eastern frontier of the EU, it became a country of transit for over one million migrants and refugees. Now that borders have almost hermetically closed, many of these people have Greece is their final destination. As the sense of urgency over these challenges decreases, a new and more fundamental challenge has to be addressed. Years of crisis-management has left the country with critical questions regarding its democratic system. According to the Eurobarometer, eight out of ten Greeks have lost faith in their own parliament, despite many elections over the last years. Meanwhile, just 26 percent of the Greeks trust their national media. 90 percent believe that it is not free from political pressure, compared to 60 percent in the rest of Europe. It is not the first time that Athens is at the heart of global democratic debate. 2500 years ago, Athens was the cradle of a political system that has become dominant worldwide and delivered the principles that underlie the European Union and its member states. Now that this system is called into question across the EU, we want to revisit Athens with a group of 15 young, non-fiction, storytellers in order to reflect upon the responsibility of journalism within a democratic system. ‘Storytellers’ may include journalists, photographers, artists and social scientists. It is our goal to form a diverse group in which different national and professional backgrounds are represented. The Caravan’s Journal is the main applicant for Erasmus+ and is an organisation established by young journalists from Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany. In the past this collective has organised educational storytelling masterclasses in Myanmar, Jerusalem and Athens. As the members of this non-profit organisation are journalists and photographers, they understand the value of professional non-fiction storytelling across borders. The telling of stories is a way of educating. By combining education and journalism in one organisation, they hope to increase the knowledge and skills of people who they cooperate with while increasing the knowledge of countries they visit in their home countries. In Athens they cooperated with Oikomedia, a journalistic organisation with a strong network across Southern Europe and in-depth knowledge of the Greek society. The members of Oikomedia are, just as The Caravan’s Journal, young and critical storytellers. Together they organised a 13-days program in Athens in which fifteen selected young Europeans participated. The organisations organised activities such as theoretical masterclasses, practical workshops, group interviews with important democratic stakeholders and field trips. While following this program, participants could work on an own story around the main topic of the trip. They were mentored in doing this. Towards the end of the trip, participants were supported in negotiating a publication in relevant media outlets across Europe (ongoing). In this way, the knowledge gathered during the trip does not remain within the group but is effectively spread. Our participants described this combination of learning, producing and publishing as an important kick-start for their careers in journalism, activism, art or academia.Participants for this project were recruited in different European member-states. They applied by submitting a motivation letter to participate and were eligible if they did not exceed the age limit of thirty years. A jury formed by members of The Caravan’s Journal and Oikomedia did the selection of the participants together with someone who had traveled with The Caravan’s Journal in the past in a similar trip (the selection committee). In the end, the fifteen selected people worked closely together to deepen each other’s knowledge, increase storytelling skills and work towards story in which fundamental questions about democracy and journalism were being discussed. The program thus contained three concrete learning goals: (1) reflecting upon democratic change and the responsibility of journalism, (2) increasing storytelling skills by learning how to effectively translate knowledge into a narrative and (3) enhance entrepreneurship by learning how to negotiate a publication in relevant media.