The project Start up for Development(START UP) is focusing on the concept of smart cities/villages and the understanding of this concept by the municipalities who are the ones implementing smart solutions in their environment. It is based on a premise that the understanding of the concept of smart cities/villages by municipalities is on a low level due to the fact that the problem is too wide, solutions even wider and there is also the lack of experts offering comprehensive solutions for municipalities. Especially those small municipalities that can not afford to have such experts in their employment.Based on the project's goal above is to prepare a course for trainers who will be able to give municipalities a clear and comprehensive explanation of what smart cities/villages would mean in their specific environment. Moreover they will be also able to give a training to other trainers and thus contribute to further dissemination of project results. To achieve this goal a set of intellectual outputswill be achieved during the project period. It will start with the survey of needs of municipalities and trainers. Following will be the curriculum development. Next it is course materials development and an organisation of a webinar for training of trainers. Once all the materials of the course are finalised they will be internationalised, i.e. translated to local languages of the consortium. All the project'scourse materials will be freely available in the form of Moodle course also after the end of the project. In order to even more strengthen the outcomes of the project its last part will be dedicated to organising international conferences in all the partner countries of the project.The project's consortium consists of five partners from Spain, Turkey, Poland, Bulgaria and Greece.The main target group of the project will be represented by adult educators who will be trained also during the project lifetime. Final beneficiaries can be defined as adult educators for whom there will be an online course freely available, representatives of municipalities who will benefit from betterunderstanding of smart cities/villages concept and finally general public that will directly benefit from smart solutions in their municipalities. The project will last for 30 months and its working language will be English.

"<< Background >>There are several reasons why the partnership applied for the project. First is the fact that all the partners of the project are actively working with education in the area of tourism development. Second, all the project partners are also actively involved in educational activities, whether these are universities or adult learning activities. Most importantly, though, the project consortium organised a survey that clearly showed a lack of education towards smart solutions in tourism that is why the decision was taken to prepare an educational project that will promote these solutions in particular and prepare educational materials for adult learners that will focus specifically on smart tourism development.<< Objectives >>The main objective of the project lays in the production of comprehensive educational materials for adult educators that will allow them to promote and organise smart tourism development among municipalities, tourism organisations and businesses that are active in tourism development. This objective will be achieved by reaching a number of smaller goals, namely - organisation of needs analysis, development of curriculum and educational methodologies, development of course materials in downloadable format, development of e-Learning course and internationalisation of educational materials, i.e. their translation into the languages of the partnership from English. At the end the course materials on smart tourism development will be available in two major languages (English and German) and the languages of the rest of the consortium (Bulgarian, Polish, Serbian, Slovak and Slovenian). The project will also produce 70 trained adult educators via its learning, teaching, training activities and at least 270 participants of multiplier events where the project results will be disseminated.<< Implementation >>The first and major project activity will be concentrated on production of a set of educational tools that will allow the adult educators to learn the principles of smart tourism development. These will be available in the form of downloadable course materials and concise e-Learning course. Afterwards, these educators will be able to deliver their knowledge to other actors responsible for tourism development. During the lifetime of the project, the content of the courses will be directly delivered to minimum 70 participants via learning, teaching, training activities and another 270 participants of multiplier events. The project will utilise study visits during the learning, teaching, training activities where best practice will be observed and integrated into learning. These study visits will take place in the cities that achieved great recognition of their initiatives under the ""European Capital of Smart Tourism"" programme. All the project's educational materials will be available in English and the languages of the consortium to achieve a Europe-wide impact and, at the same time, to make them available to national target groups without language barrier. The project will be finalised with the set of multiplier events - national conferences that will create a potential for broad dissemination also on international level as these events will see the presence of both national and international audience. The courses developed within the project will be freely available at least five years after the end of the project's activities.<< Results >>The project will achieve two main results. First being Curriculum & Educational Methodologies Design. This project result will include sub-results of needs analysis and development of curriculum and educational methodologies on the basis of which second project result will be based.Second project result was defined as Course Materials Development. This project result-will include sub-results of development of course materials in downloadable format, development of e-Learning course and internationalisation of educational materials.Important outcomes of the project will exist also in the format of learning, teaching, training activities where 70 adult educators will be trained. Next outcome is presented by organisation of 6 multiplier events in each partner country where 240 local and additional 30 international participants will be affiliated with the project outcomes and will be able to utilise the online resources produced within the project."

Our project was set in the context of the European Year of Cultural Heritage 2018 (as well as Plovdiv, which was the European Capital of Culture in Bulgaria in 2019) and the contribution of the Culture Sector to the employment of young people.The project contributed to this main goal of youth employment through a European platform with online tools for youth workers, employment agents and volunteers who work with young people on a daily basis. For this reason, we have identified the need to train youth workers, job brokers and even volunteers to equip them with the tools necessary to initiate and guide activities aimed at young people, such as work workshops and individual counseling. The project involved the exchange of good practice, the implementation of networks at European level to facilitate the work of young people with cultural skills, the training of youth leaders and the creation of a European platform with online tools for youth workers and job brokers to inspire them and contribute to disseminating work on cultural heritage among young people.Promoting work in the field of cultural heritage is important as statistics show that young people are highly motivated to use their energy and creativity to develop work related to European cultural heritage.Together with five partners: INNETICA from Spain; Edu Consulting, z.ú from the Czech Republic; Regional Development Agency with the Business Support Center for Small and Medium Enterprises from Bulgaria; European Grants International Academy S.R.L. from Italy and GURSU BELEDIYESI from Turkey, we achieved our common goals and helped European youth who are also our heritage.

<< Background >>In the last decades, NGOs have faced different and consecutive crises: the 2008 financial crisis and the current COVID crisis. These events have put into a delicate position these organisations in terms of financing resources. Most of their incomes come from public funds which are decreasing year every year. On the other hand, their profits coming from private corporations are not a reliable source of income. Therefore, they are obliged to find new models to generate profits that could make sustainable their services. Apart from that, this project will help them to offer new services to their target groups. For example, they could provide entrepreneurial services to persons at risk of exclusion they are working with. DRAGGING project results will meet all these needs by creating several project results that could be transformed into different services and tools for its target groups.Regarding local public administrations, the model proposed by DRAGGING will help them to create local synergies with local social services providers. Local public administrations mostly are not aware of the capacities and services local NGOs and local third sector organisations could provide. Therefore, they launch calls for providers that normally are won by other non-local corporations specialised in such calls. Our approach consists in reduce the gap between local administrations and local social organisations in order to generate a bank of business opportunities to which these organisations may apply. DRAGGING will set up the tools and the methodology that will make this possible.<< Objectives >>DRAGGING has a clear objective, to help with the following three challenges: to diversify the sources of income for NGOs, take advantage of new legislations/public hiring opportunities and generate job opportunities for people at risk of exclusion. This will be done by training professionals through a mentoring process where they will be provided with training in different subjects (business strategy, finance, marketing, etc.) while consulting work on the ideal business model is carried out to meet all administration needs. Everything will serve to create companies together with people at risk of exclusion with whom they are working with and to cover the main need, employment.<< Implementation >>The activities that we are planning to implement are:1. Conduct a territorial analysis that will provide us information about the stakeholders involved and the challenges to be faced. Furthermore, this mapping will help us to identify the potential participants in the project activities at an early stage.2. In order to generate business ideas, we will create focus group in which public administrations and other stakeholders such as companies and/or business professionals will provide and discuss these ideas. Afterward, these ideas will be analysed and business models to develop them will be drafted. Once analysed and develop these business models will be upload to the online marketplace developed to this end.3. A online digital course will be created to provide support to the persons at risk of exclusion that will decide to entrepreneur with NGOs. 15 courses at the EU level will be analysed in terms of contents, learning methodologies, and follow-up KPIs. Mentors and entrepreneurs will validate these contents. Also, it will be created an online platform to include the contents and provide the training.4. As impact is really important to social projects, we will generate a methodological approach to measure the impact of our new entrepreneurs and the activities carried out within the project. The deliverable will be a practical methodology to provide figures and details on the impact generated by the project.<< Results >>DRAGGING will produce 4 PRs:PR1. Territorial analysis on the most important stakeholders and challenges.PR2. An online business ideas marketplace where the business ideas arose from the cooperation amongst stakeholders will be placed.PR3. A digital training course focused on those persons at risk of exclusion (involved in a NGO) willing to create their own micro-companies.PR4. A methodology to measure the impact of social entreprises.Also, the project will produce the following TANGIBLE OUTCOMES:1 Material generated by the action:-- Questionnaires for the focus groups in PR1.-- Report on business opportunities and entrepreneurial mentoring challenges in PR1.-- Local agreements to foster entrepreneurial mentoring of people at risk of exclusion.-- Creation of a methodological framework for business ideas.-- The design of mentoring.-- Report on training needs for the online course.-- Report on the entrepreneurship training course at EU level.-- The design of a Business Manual for the online course.-- Training contents in wiki format.-- Analysis Report on social impact measurement.-- New set of indicators to measure impact.2 Communication materials:-- Best practices related to the experiences and the work done in each project result.-- Success stories.-- Communication materials: infographics, leaflets, website, press releases, news, etc.-- Increase the number of youngsters hired in the partners' local areas.-- A total of 150 people will attend the Multiplier Events and 600 will be contacted by email (100 per member). -- It is estimated that the impact of the project's website will receive 1,000 visits, supporting its dissemination from the Social Networks. -- Presentations for the 60 visits to different entities explaining the project will be made during the project (10 per partner) -- All the contents and news will be done to be disseminated through the different Social Networks of the partners (Linkedin, Facebook, Youtube, etc.), creating a multiplying effect and generating 18,000 visualizations during the project, 3,000 per partner.3 Direct impacts:-- Number of NGO professionals participating in the project: 40 directly (5 per NGO) and some 200 contacted in 3 countries-- Number of entrepreneurs at risk of exclusion: 9 directly (3 in 3 countries) and approx 60 contacted-- Number of local and regional authorities: 9, 3 in 3 countries-- Number of teachers/mentors from the business environment: about 8 directly involved in the training and about 60 contacted-- Number of chambers of commerce: 6 informed, at least 1 per member-- Number of business associations: 30 informed, at least 5 per member-- Number of incubators: 12 informed, at least 2 per partner-- Number of technology centres: 12 informed, at least 2 per partner