<< Objectives >>The project aims to transfer know-how of volunteering involvement of seniors as lecturers in adult education according to the Danish model, and to professionalize teaching skills and work with senior public on the basis of the unique Czech teaching academy SEFTE. Both will increase the inclusion of seniors in education and improve their competencies through the empowerment of seniors in the operation of senior education centers.<< Implementation >>Within the partnership Elpida´s team will visit 2 senior activity centres of Ringkøbing-Skjern Kommune, shadow the work of the danish partner and share good practices in senior volunteering. The project furthermore increases the professionalism of senior activity teachers and develops competencies of senior lecturers. All activities will be based on shared and adapted methodological procedures. The cooperation can develop digitization of education in form or e-learning for the senior public.<< Results >>This project represents a great social innovation in adult education in Czechia, namely the use of the potential of senior adults for their direct active involvement as lecturers in the adult education. Seniors thus become direct performers of lifelong learning, not just passive beneficiaries. The important outputs such as the Methodology of Empowerment of Seniors and the Methodology of Training of Senior Lecturers will be transferable to other educational organizations for senior adults.

In a context of high youth unemployment rates and depopulation in rural areas, entrepreneurship becomes a key element to build an adversity-safe future of Europe and a tool to find alternative ways to deal with labour market challenges. Building local ecosystems focused on promoting and enabling youth entrepreneurship with a glocal perspective can help in tackling these challenges, with teachers and youth workers as key enablers to promote innovative entrepreneurial models in a lifelong learning context. Led by Vestland County Coucil, YESpecialist gathers experts from six European regions in Spain, Italy, Croatia, Denmark and Norway, plus a European network of regional & local authorities for lifelong learning, to create a new innovative methodology that will build up local ecosystems, introducing non formal and informal methods into formal education and to promote innovative entrepreneurship concepts. The project will specially focus on rural areas and will be inclusive regarding young people from vulnerable groups. Cooperation between all actors (authorities, business, NGOs, and schools), with an emphasis on VET teachers and youth workers is key to achieve the project results. Key outputs of the project will be a repository of active youth involvement in local ecosystems at European level, guidelines for building up regional/local ecosystems to promote youth entrepreneurship in rural areas, and a training course for stakeholders aiming at building such ecosystems. The latter will be implemented in two international pilot training courses that will build capacity in rural local contexts while promoting their interconnection at regional, national and European level.

"""CULTURE UP – Capacity building of Cultural Institutions and Local Authorities in non–urban and peripheral areas"" project sets out to share and exchange knowledge and practices of cultural development across the public, private and civil sector in five European non–urban and peripheral areas. The project includes five European partners that have been engaged in former, coming or aspiring European Capitals of Culture (ECOC), both as host city or as neighboring cultural institutions and local authorities in the region, working with diverse age groups of children, youth and adults.The project partners more specifically represents: Tampere 2026/Finland, Novi Sad 2021/Serbia, Galway 2020/Ireland, Leeuwarden 2018/The Netherlands and Aarhus 2017/Denmark.The goal is to build capacity on best-conducted practices and transfer experiences, knowledge and know-how through European networking amongst cultural institutions, civil society organisations and local authorities working in the cultural field in non-urban and peripheral areas, Through the diverse experiences, strategies, learning and perspectives from an artistic, cultural, institutional and local authority level, all lead and associated partners will work towards exchanging and developing an outline strategy with a European partnership mind-set and values. Setting an active future plan that functions as an institutionalized new learning model of operation, and a catalyst for sustainable cultural development in non–urban areas. Thus bridging technical and know how inequality of opportunities in these peripheral areas.In a rotational mode, individual partners exchange job shadowing opportunities both on location and online. In the same mode, each partner is responsible for creating a local host program in her/his local area to host all other partners. The host program will organise visits to the different stakeholders in these non–urban areas, through induction meetings, TOT training of trainers sessions, seminars, cultural activities, networking and exchanges. All rotational exchange programs end with a debrief and an evaluation session with all participants led by the Project Coordinators and Communication Coordinators. The main purpose of the evaluation session is to ensure progress in the project and that each exchange visit has reached its goals. The outcome results in an outline strategy on how to operate together in future European projects addressing present non-urban challenges in sustainable cultural development. Results of the project CULTURE UP will be of a diverse nature and consist of both (tangible) results as well as (intangible results) like skills and personal experiences. Some of the intangible results will be measured by the use of interviews, questionnaires, tests, observations or self-assessment mechanisms that may help to record these types of results. Those results that will be disseminated more widely as e.g. experiences, strategies or processes, programs and activities will be documented.Number of participants: There are 9 project partners representing cultural institutions or organisations and local authorities. A total of 27 European participants plus relevant national participants will be included in the LTTA. The project has defined the following specific objectives: 1. Exchange and knowledge-sharing of concrete experiences to strengthen capacity of cultural development in non–urban areas both on an artistic, and institutional and local authority level (by exploring best practices, participatory and bottom-up approaches, peer-to-peer methodology of hands on training).2. Create awareness on cultural development in non–urban areas and support existing initiatives3. Develop European partnerships on cultural development in non–urban areas and show the way for a stronger European awareness in smaller cultural institutions and newcomers as a potential path for innovative development and solutions to local challenges4. Create an outline strategy for an institutionalised new learning model of operating European cultural development in non–urban areasEnvisaged long term impact:1.Inspired and motivated cultural newcomers to work on a European level as a way of developing local practices and strengthen their cultural capacity and hereby accommodate rural challenges.2. Regenerated ways for local authorities in being a cultural sector catalyst, creating opportunities in non–urban areas.3. Platforms for future non–urban partnerships are identified with specific types of exchanges for future collaborations between smaller cultural institutions, artists and organizations.4. Raised visibility of cultural narrative in non–urban areasThe potential longer term benefits of the project CULTURE UP is to show and promote that rural areas can as much be laboratories for exploration of possibilities within culture and forward culture as drivers for habitation, social gatherings and rural development in general."

Project “Professional SMEs in tourism – transnational development of skills acquisition” has focus on motivating tourist SME’s to upgrade their skills - in particular, digital marketing skills. It is a common observation in the three participating countries, England, Portugal and Denmark that small tourist SME’s has little motivation to acquire further skills. The consequence is that a poor levels of technology adoption among small tourism businesses is a barrier to growth - not only for the individual business but also for the wider tourism destinations of which small businesses comprise the main product. To address this need, tourism SME's require a clear road map for ‘Digital Transformation’ which will provide them with a framework for improving their adoption and usage of technology. The project will develop a “digital competence ladder” by which the SME’s can measure their own skills level and compare it with both local competition as well as transnationally, by answering a questionnaire that is coupled to the “Ladder”. The ladder will be developed and tested by the universities in cooperation with the local partner Destination Management Organisations (DMO) in the three countries. Upon final development of the ladder and questionnaire it will be utilised on a national level. Results will be analysed and barriers and needs for the target group will be identified. Test courses will be developed and tested, and the skill level improvement documented. The project will be disseminated by several media's using the competences of the participating DMO’s. Universities will public academic papers and also participate in meetings, where SME’s meet. The project will sustain by embedding the results in local VET-schools curriculum as well as in a portal we will develop with case studies and links to relevant educational offers. However, the main sustainability impact - we believe - will be a continuous movement of increasing awareness of the benefits of lifelong learning by the SME’s.