"Context:For any early childhood education setting - nursery or pre-primary school - to be successful, parents’ involvement is much needed. It outstandingly makes the difference. It is a powerful lever any community can use to create meaningful improvements in children education, care and learning. It includes the parental efforts and attitudes that impact children at home in their daily routine. Parents’ high expectations in early childhood education and care (E.C.E.C.) account for the most important part. The parents’ relationship with school: communicating with educators, attending school events, participating in school governance and strengthening children’s skills and learning achievements is essentai for pupils'growth. Education settings and programmes having a high level of quality are positively associated with children’s emotional, cognitive and behavioural development, with disadvantaged children benefiting the most. Research evidence currently suggests that a strong and consistent home–school relationship is the preliminary step to successfully reach that high level quality. That was the core of the Erasmus+ project “Caring Well Together – A successful alliance of supportive educators” and the file rouge that all partners have been weaving throughout this three year long project (including the COVID-19 pandemic period) of short-term mobilities and jobshadowing, plenary workshops, exchange and comparison of best practices regarding parental involvement in school pedagogy even during the COVID-19 period and the transition to distance learning. Many parents have had to contend with an unexpected situation in which the boundaries between school and home have been blurred and changed radically. The final output is the Final Handbook, which has come into being during this hard time of the pandemic crisis. Its pedagogical content is the synthesis of the rich array of ideas and activities carried out by the partners’ school educators in order to both keep alive their relationship with families and help parents create a new learning framework at home for their children, successfully enjoying their time together. This unique Handbook has been targeted at:- parents in order to help them and have continuous learning for kids (kindergarten-homekindergarten-home);- educators in order to ensure professional development to educators that didn't have the chance to take part in this partnership.Project's objectives: 1. To exchange best practices between partner countries;2. Improve teacher qualification;3. To analyse and to carry out a comparative analysis of activities involving parents carried out by participating kindergartens;4. To write an Handbook summarizing the best practices identified and addressed both to educators and parents.The educators have seen their expertise improving all along the development of the entire project, going from the efficient use of IT tools to share ideas from the planned moments of actual training.The planned activities:The planned activities were conceived in such a way as to lead to the achievement of the project's objectives through a gradual process which ensured the partners' profound appropriation of the project's working methods and objectives. Day after day, the educators got used to sharing ideas, to being actors in a peer-to-peer learning process (in a European dimension) which allowed them to get to know new realities and at the same time to focus on the peculiarities of their educational environment. The first six months of the project were conducted only through a distance cooperation between the partners, using in particular the eTwinning portal. This tool allowed the partners to identify common pedagogical issues and specific needs of their local context related to the parent-child relationship. They then carried out a comparative analysis and laid the groundwork for improving the approaches used.Institutions and people involved in the project presented themselves on the eTwinning portal.For example, through eTwinning cooperation, the partners investigated:1. their respective family models;2. their educational models;3. developed a questionnaire for parents to measure their expectations and willingness to become more involved in the project;4. their good practices: identified, collected and shared.This first analysis given them the first elements to design a common project: a handbook of suggested methods and activities involving Parents. The core of the project were the short-term mobilities of the kindergarten teachers. They represented an unique way for the educators to be accompanied and trained by an external educationalist (during the two plenary workshops) and to get an unique training on the job working in the partners kindergartens. The training conducted during the mobilities were aimed also at identifing tools (e.g. specific activities to be developed by the participating kindergartens or a set of coordinated activities involving local communities) able to face the subject matter of Parenthood. These tools were developed in the Handbook. The mobilities were designed in order to deeply respect the different rhythms and needs of the involved Partners, but at the same time, in order to ensure that all of them fully benefited of this training opportunity and got the best possible impact from the project. To this end, teacher and educators were selected in order to take part in short-term mobilities and workshops.Project's results and its expected longer-term benefits:Through the project, the partner educators, in close cooperation, tried to overcome a critical problem concerning children's development in relation to their educational environment, namely the need to involve parents more in educational activities. Starting from the identification and shared analysis of needs, the partners, through the exchange of good practices, improved the qualification of teachers by providing solutions by identifying best practices, also included in the Handbook, addressed to both educators and parents. In the long-term, educators partners see that this project will help the involved institutions to build internationalcooperation contacts, experience and learn from other kindergartens and institutions, use the best practices and ideas gathered in their daily work and increase the quality of their teaching and operating. Through this project and the planned training activities, the institutions will get qualification as teaching staff. As the institutions have parents, who are involved in the school life, the partner kindergartens are looking forward to creating the most organized system through the experience in this project and partners involved in the project. Even if the training activities and the mobilities will no longer be possible, the kindergartens plan tokeep on cooperating remotely through eTwinning. They will integrate the project results in their pedagogical approach and implement one or more best practices of their partners. The cooperation through eTwinnings will enable them to continuously keep in touch and share suggestions on the activities implemented and more generally to consolidate their ""Supportive caring alliance model"" described in the Best practice handbook."

"Participation for all citizens is enshrined as a fundamental right in the Treaty on the European Union where it is stated that “every citizen shall have the right to participate in the democratic life of the Union. Decisions shall be taken as openly and as closely as possible to the citizen”. There is, however, a big gap in the participation of young people and the structures and bodies that are meant to represent them. Unlike the theory that young people are not motivated and involved, young people are engaging in new and innovative ways that are not always fully understood by their elected representatives. This gap is recognized in the EU Youth Goal nº 9 mentioning that “young people are underrepresented in decision-making processes which affect them although their engagement is crucial to democracy”. And more than underrepresentation, it is important to understand that participation is about sharing and redistributing power and that even in the structures and mechanisms where youngsters are present, their voice, engagement, and decisions are often not accounted for. The Youth Goal n°9 is moreover the protagonist of the upcoming Youth Dialogue led by the German presidency of the Council of the European Union. Local Youth Councils are widely recognized as great instruments to combat the tendency local governments might have to decide for and instead of youngsters, but they too can be improved in order to, following Hart's model, avoid manipulation and tokenization of youth participation.Local Youth Councils have two main dimensions: one is pedagogical and the other is civic and democratic. For many youngsters, local youth councils are the first contact with more formal democratic means. It is through and during their participation in these councils that they are ""learning to participate"". It is important hence not to disappoint the young people taking part (by tokenizing them or manipulating their voices, not following through with what they decided...), but also to encourage them and make them believe in the democratic process, which can they have multiplier effects on their peers. We believe that decision-making processes and structures should be appealing, inclusive, and provide meaningful participation for the young people involved in them.AIM AND OBJECTIVES: In line with the European documents mentioned, this project aims to strengthen young people’s democratic participation at the local and regional levels by improving upon existing local youth councils processes and practices. The project sets the following objectives:- Map current practices and structures of Local Youth Councils in the participating countries in order to extract key learnings in order to improve the existing structures;- Develop competences of the stakeholders involved in the Local Youth Councils;- Raise awareness and improve the knowledge of the pedagogical and civic purpose of Local Youth Council in the democratic education of youth;- Foster the quality, impact, reach and evaluation processes of Local Youth Councils, as standards for youth participation in the decision-making process;- Advocate and mainstream the development of Local Youth Councils in Europe as crucial instruments of youth participation.We also aim to pursue several tangible and intangible results during and after our project implementation such as:Tangible Outcomes: - Document mapping of different existing structures of Local Youth Councils in participating countries;- Improved capacity of youth workers and municipality representatives to implement local youth councils as mechanisms of youth participation in decision-making processes- Creation of guidelines for sustainable, inclusive and participatory local youth council created from the analysis of different models of Local Youth Councils and composed by quality indicators and real-life examples of existing local youth councils;- Report of project activities (Training Course and local activities implemented);- Visibility and dissemination of project products (no. of downloads and page visits, no. of participants in the activities, no. of applications received, etc.).The project will start in February 2021, directly involving around 50 participants and last for 18 months. They will be mapping directly best practices from Youth Council and they will also be involved in the evaluation, monitoring and dissemination of the results of the project, as well as its follow-up. The main project activities will be:- 1 Training course on “Quality assurance in Local Youth Councils”- 2 Transnational partners’ meetingsThe project partners expect that the project has a European-wide impact in supporting the creation and/or improvement of local youth councils around Europe; in building a strong network of local public bodies and civil society organizations advocating for this instrument of local democracy. and disseminating local youth councils through the good practices collected and than published."

"<< Objectives >>The aim of the project is to support and help small museums to enhance their strengths. The specific objectives are: toimprove digital, marketing and communication skills in the museum sector; sharing good practices among partners andincreasing the international dimension of museums. The planned activities concern specific training courses andcooperation between partners thanks to which participants will learn how to use different digital promotion tools.<< Implementation >>The planned activities concern: the collection of information on all the advertising tools that the EU and the projectsfinanced by it make available to museums; the inclusion of the Museums participating in the project on these platforms /webapp; specific training in the field of museum digitization also using the results of the Erasmus ""Museum SectorAlliance"" (Mu.Sa) project; the production of a practical guide ""Small museums on the go"" that can make other museumsgrow.<< Results >>The expected results will be: the inclusion of the Museums participating in the project on all the identified tools (platformsand various apps); the definition of a long-term digital strategy; the preparation and dissemination of a practical guide forsmall museums; the increase in the number of face-to-face and online visits for the museums involved; at least one schoolin the territory of each partner will be able to discover very distant museums and small, often hidden treasures."

The recent migration waves have been posing increasing challenges to the national education systems and to the quality of education and learning at large. In particular, the presence of an increasing number of pupils with a foreign background in pre-schools, primary schools and lower secondary schools has opened up questions about how to adapt the learning context to a situation characterised by the presence of pupils in the classes not only with different cultural background but different levels of language knowledge. The partnership has decided to address more effectively the organizational settings of schools in relation to the continuity between levels (pre-school and primary and primary and lower secondary). In this light the learning spaces (both virtual and real) and methods facilitating inclusion while offering opportunities for development and achievements to all students are an important element to consider. Last but not least the training of the teachers and other staff to deal more effectively with a multicultural situation in the class.The project has aimed to contributing to a reflection on the creation of a learning context at local level and at school level which is able to meet the challenges posed by the recent migration waves.The specific objectives have been:1. To exchange good practices on the organizational settings facilitating transition across the different educational levels especially for those with a foreign background2. To reflect upon and adapt solutions which can lead to learning spaces producing a faster integration without jeopardize achievements of the whole class3. To identify training needs of teachers in relation to learning spaces and the specificities of multicultural classes and define a training path.The partnership is trilateral and it is led by a bilateral network of local and regional authorities (SERN), four municipalities (Ravenna, Collecchio, Linkoping and Norrkoping) , one association of schools (CECE), two schools (IC Guatelli and IC Da Vinci) and a university (University of Parma). The participants in the project have been: teachers at pre-school, primary and lower secondary level, Headmasters and school leaders, educators policy makers.The activities foreseen by the project consisted of four transnational meetings for coordination and management (TPM) ; four transnational seminars (LTTA) targeting transition between school cycles, learning environments and skills of the teachers, a pilot training course based on the exchange of practices targeting teachers. The project partnership organised also four local dissemination meetings.The main results achieved by the project have been: an increased awareness about the importance of organizational settings in schools leading to a smoother transition across levels, an improved knowledge about strategies facilitating transition among headmasters, policy makers and civil servants in the three countries; improved skills of the teachers pertaining learning environment fostering school results and integration, and Improved knowledge about practices on management of multicultural classes; new practices tested and transferred in particular from Sweden to Italy.