PMCOST addresses the key challenge of particulate matter (PM) air pollution in Poland which is one of the major threats to human health across the country and Europe in general. To date air pollution modelling in Poland has not received the investment needed to fully grasp these challenges. PMCOST brings together the leading Polish researchers on air pollution together with world leading experts from UK and Norway to address this challenge. This twinning of researchers, matches complementary areas of expertise and will enable Poland to be more effective in supporting Polish policy makers and other stakeholder in developing plans for better air quality in Poland. At the same time, it will provide the technical underpinning for Poland to become an international leader in assessment of transboundary air pollution, especially in relation to the UNECE Geneva Convention on Long-range transboundary air pollution, and in support of the European Air Quality Directive. The project will develop a capability in Poland for state of the art atmospheric chemistry transport modelling (ACTM). This will permit a detailed national assessment of the complex chemical composition of PM, the main contributing emissions sources and the most effective strategies to protect human health through targeted emissions abatement. To achieve this goal PMCOST will focus on three core Twinning Activities: Training of Polish staff through two-way exchange with the expert partners; Improving the output of high quality peer reviewed publications; Developing the interface between scientists and stakeholders and policy makers through thematic workshops. The key aspects of the Training Programme are represented by three of the five work packages focused on preparation of high quality emissions data for use in ACTMs, operational air pollution modelling of PM and assessing the human health benefits of different emission abatement options.

According to European Commission (EC), Social Enterprises (SEs) joint social or societal objective with entrepreneurial spirit and common good. An SE is an operator in the social economy and its main goal is to have a social impact. In 2011, the EC launched the Social Business Initiative (SBI) to improve access to finance, achieve more visibility and an optimised legal environment for SEs. Since then some progress has been achieved, such as the inclusion of a line of actions in support to SE as a way to create job opportunities and face poverty in 2014-2020 ESF. The final declaration of the SBI event (Strasbourg, 2014) confirmed the importance of CAPACITY BUILDING, TRAINING & EDUCATION, business start-up and development support for the SEs growth. In the same way, the EC acknowledged that appropriate support is needed to build SEs’ capabilities and capacities and that intermediary bodies and NETWORKING SUPPORT between SEs are critical. A set of obstacles identified, both at national and EU level, are the unclear legislation, poor understanding of SE concept and access to market/finance. The main problem though is focused on lack of TRAINING and INTERACTION among stakeholders from different regions/countries, as confirmed by a recent publication (DG EMPL, 2014).Despite differences, in all partner countries time for social entrepreneurship has come as a preferred route to confront high unemployment, as it is addressing important social needs with an approach that has the potential to be efficient, effective and financially sustainable. Based on the above facts, the @ESEN project aim is to become a catalyst for the rapidly growing social enterprise movement in EU providing social enterprises with the resources they need to succeed, support and grow social entrepreneurship on a national scale and serve as a voice for more sustainable social impact.The @ESEN objectives are: •Building of national and local social enterprise networks by expanding and interconnecting with existing networks •Raising awareness of social enterprise as a way to create job opportunities and face poverty with a positive social impact and promote the work of existing SEs•Curating and sharing knowledge to build capacity through a variety of offerings including the online @ESEN Knowledge Center which will provide: - CAPACITY BUILDING, TRAINING & EDUCATION services to SEs, using ICT to blend methodologies, integrate practices & overcome local boundaries- Success stories of SEs addressing important social needs with an approach that has the potential to be efficient, effective and financially sustainable. The @ESEN target group is active and potential SEs, facilitators, academics, consultants and policy makers in the field of social entrepreneurship &economy organisations looking for opportunities to interact and cooperate at EU level. The main activities that will be carried out in the context of the project, follow a logical sequence which guarantees that, at the end of the project, there will be a fully operative framework supporting sustainable Social Entrepreneurship throughout the EU. Synoptically, the following activities will be undertaken: 1. Transnational survey and analysis on successful stories and recommendations for social entrepreneurship enhancement at European level. 2. The @ESEN Programme and the @ESEN Syllabus to train support and guide active and potential social entrepreneurs in developing their social business idea.3. Creation and operation of the @ESEN eLearning platform to foster pre-incubation, acceleration and entrepreneurial facilitation through blended learning activities for a group of 100 participating the pilot training and open to all interested parties.4. Establishment of the @ESEN Knowledge Network, who will act as a body of networking of social entrepreneurs, social economy organisations, facilitators, business angels, mentors, trainers, students and every European citizen interested in social entrepreneurship and social economy. This network will be expanded to 400 members at EU level, which will continue running after the end of the project and will bring together the most appropriate actors in that topic.The long term perspective is that the @ESEN will become a reference point in social entrepreneurship in Europe, achieving the greatest adhesion from Social Economy Organisations and Social Entrepreneurs, consolidating and developing its services and offering its diverse expertise and qualified competences to public and private clients, generating social business opportunities at EU and international level.

The EwasteR – “Designing and Testing new management skills for the development of the Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment Recycling and Re-use System in Europe” is a three years Sector Skills Alliance project funded by ERASMUS + programme (2014-2020). The EwasteR project sector in the SSA framework is “Environmental technologies”.EwasteR was primarily concerned with the vocational education and training (VET) dimension of the WEEE reuse and recycling management systems.The EwasteR project developed an innovative European competency Framework - new high-quality interdisciplinary VET Curriculum and professional profile for “E- waste Reuse and Recycling Specialist”, working through the production and the waste phase of a product, increasing the sense of initiative and entrepreneurship as well as the quality and potential of employability and mobility and bringing to award new Qualifications to be transferred into NQF-RQF, becoming accessible to a broader audience. The three years EwasteR journey, undertaken through a series of nine closely related work packages, developed and established the partnership as a collaborative high performance team. The EwasteR alliance consists of four different countries (Italy, UK, Poland, and Cyprus) and thirteen organisations from different sectors as requested by the Sector Skills Alliance action. i) Public or private entities that provide VET, higher education; ii) Public or private entities that have sector specific expertise and represent or are active in a given sector (at regional, national and/or European level); iii) Public or private entities that have a regulatory function for education and training systems (at regional, national and/or European level). The EwasteR project addressed the increasingly relevance of the Electrical and electronic waste (E-waste) sector in Europe which is currently the largest growing waste stream.The main beneficiaries of the project are young aspiring workers/technicians and entrepreneurs (learners) wishing to work in the weee recycling and reuse management sector.The EwasteR Consortium has been collaborating for three years achieving a comprehensive series of inter-related results to address these issues, specifically:•Mapping of the current qualifications routes across Europe relevant to this field of UEEE/WEEE reuse and recycling and producing a final Research Report•Collaboratively designing and developing a joint professional training curriculum for “E- waste Reuse and Recycling Specialist” with a strong package of “VET” Units - combining: i) management skills area and ii) vocational skills area - tightly connected to the European Qualifications Framework (EQF Level 4) and experimenting the EU Credit system for Vocational Education and Training (ECVET) •Designing and delivering National PILOT training activities through an integrated blended approach including: career guidance, classroom, open management schools, labs shadowing and LOs assessment, and involving young and well-motivated aspiring technicians/specialists, learners, experts and VET providers.•Designing a joint Handbook including the final transparent recognition and validation process for the assessment of learning outcomes •New EwasteR Qualifications awarded at National level (Italy) and transferred into NQF-RQF and new processes for awarding and transferring (Qualification designed or part of it) started and implemented in the other Countries in compliance with each National legal-framework, increasing the employability-occupation chances in the sector across Europe.•Providing new mobility opportunities in EU for aspiring entrepreneurs in the wee recycling and reuse sector through the EYE programme•Defining a multi-actor approach to undertake a comprehensive raising awareness programme about the SSA framework, VET dimension of the WEEE recycling and reuse across EU, through robust dissemination activities

URBANREC project aims to develop and implement an eco-innovative and integral bulky waste management system (enhancing prevention, improving logistics and allowing new waste treatments to obtain high added value recycled products) and demonstrate its effectiveness in different regions. In URBANREC project, Northern, Mediterranean, Eastern and South-eastern areas in Europe are represented by Belgium, Spain, Poland and Turkey, which have very different urban waste recycling rates, from around a 60% in Belgium, 25-30% in Spain, or 20% in Poland, to less than 5% in Turkey. URBANREC project aims to improve the separation and disassembling of bulky waste - implementing advanced fragmentation techniques to obtain high quality raw materials, promoting innovative valorisation routes for those considered more problematic (PUR foam, mixed hard plastics and mixed textiles), not recycled due to lack of eco-innovative cost-effective solutions. The waste treatments considered in the project include i) rebonding and chemical glycolisis for the PUR materials, to prepare renewable adhesives, ii) needle felt to obtain isolation panels from textiles, iii) fibre reinforced composites from textiles, iv) wood Plastic composites (WPC) and v) catalytic hydro-gasification with plasma for mixed hard plastics to obtain chemicals or fuel. These treatments will be optimized and implemented at industrial level thanks to the collaboration of the URBANREC partners: top Research Institutes at EU level, and companies interested in obtaining novel eco-friendly products from waste, under a circular economy approach. All relevant actors in the waste management chain in every country have been also involved as project partners (local authorities and city amenity sites in Belgium, Spain, Poland and Turkey) guaranteeing the implementation of the proposed solutions at local level, adapting them to suit the particular characteristics of each area, ensuring the replication at EU level