The tourism sector is undergoing profound changes throughout Europe, as we are living in the Project, Digital, Creative, Entrepreneurial and Green Economy era, thus applying a holistic approach to sustainable tourism development is crucial.HyPro4ST alliance seeks to bring positive social and sustainable impact to tourism sector and is built around the idea that collaborative, transnational activities offer opportunities for boosting innovation and progress by pooling resources and the deep knowledge of markets required in a fast-changing world.It aims to develop a new job “Sustainable and Hybrid Project Manager” profile for the Sustainable Tourism Sector, upskill professionals in sustainable, hybrid, digital, creative and entrepreneurship project management, helping alleviate the job losses, inequalities, and other risks, and to build a talent pipeline that tourism sector can mine for future growth. It also proposes the upscaling of VET and higher education trainers’ skills, to be able to adapt to the tourism labour market needs. HyPro4ST develops a joint training programme, HyPro4ST VOOC, in accordance with the ECVET/EQF/EQAVET and Micro-credential approach, the HyPro4ST Practical Guide for trainers, a certification scheme for the new profile and the HyPro4ST Virtual Learning Hub. Through 6 Seminars, 6 online courses, 2 work-based learning activities and the transnational mobility, will enhance the competences of 700 professionals, tackling skills mismatches and supporting the formation of an effective higher and vocational education system for the sustainable tourism sector. This multi-stakeholder partnership, comprising of 17 partners from 6 European countries, develops all the outputs in 7 EU languages, ensuring their cross-border transferability. Furthermore, it assures the long-lasting effect of the project results by elaborating Policy Recommendations, able to inform the policy agendas at national and EU level.

<< Background >>The tourism sector has a significant and increasing role in the EU economic performance. Along with its strengthening, some new directions appeared recently. In parallel with the growing role of short domestic travels, offbeat destinations became more important against mass tourism ones. The highlighted tendencies raise the need of new approaches. The first one of these is the community-based ecotourism.In the existing agendas, regional tourism is mostly connected to individual attractions, while the growing need on community-based tourism has less attention. Even if it is a core element of local population retention and welfare, the complex development of the community through tourism – over some valuable initiatives - is out of the tourism development initiatives. Community-based ecotourism should emphasize the development of local communities and allow for residents to have substantial control over, and involvement in, its development and management, and a major proportion of the benefits should remain within the community. Community-based ecotourism should foster sustainable use and collective responsibility, but it also should embrace individual initiatives within the community. Additionally, it is essential that approaches to community-based ecotourism projects are a part of a larger community development strategy and carefully planned with community members. The second one is the role of the new regional destinations.Among the wide range of tourism destinations, offbeat ones – mostly in hidden rural areas – have increasing role in European countries (European Agenda for Tourism 2050). Their growing importance directly relates to the breakthrough of regional tourism against long distance one. The offbeat destinations give the opportunity of different tourism types, like agrotourism, ecotourism, geotourism, rural tourism, responsible tourism as well as special interest tourism. All of them are good ground for helping local communities and the environment, while supporting climate neutral tourism.Even though regional community-based tourism (with offbeat destinations) is indicated in EU and territorial strategies as an efficient driver of tourism industry, its development following a greener and more digital approach is not a standard component of the related agendas. Additionally, while circular economy has central focus in local economic development, the circular tourism approach is rarely used. Finally, regional tourism is mostly run by family or micro businesses on the hosts’ and suppliers’ side. They are well experienced in their traditional tourism business, however, need further skills and competences on the acceleration of their services through the approach of community-based circular tourism.As of the preliminary territorial analysis made during preparation phase of the project, tourism hosts, operators, and suppliers (as learners) as well as their supporting organizations (as educators) have no competences and skills to adapt circular tourism principle to address community-based development. The combination of missing competences is currently not part of the adult education curricula and need the integration of new learning elements and methodologies. The partnership decided to join its forces to offer a a valuable solution to increase competences of tourism staff to successfully face these challanges.<< Objectives >>Following the given needs, RE-CONNECT has identified a clear need to accelerate the competence and skill development of community-based tourism in offbeat destinations by implementing a greener and more digital development approach to assure more sustainable tourism along circular tourism approach. The solution offered by RE-CONNECT is to address the given needs and challenges by developing and implementing a toolkit on competence and behaviour development on circular tourism for local communities. Especially tourism labour force at operators, local SMEs, NGOs, suppliers, and local government, as well as tourists are planned to be involved. •Being in line with the priorities of environmental sustainability and climate goals as well as digital transformations, the project aims to increase the competences of local tourism communities on greener and more digital tourism products and services by:•Developing a viable interregional digital ecosystem of local tourism communities along circular tourism.•Increasing the readiness and competences of tourism labour force on climate neutral tourism at offbeat destinations.•Developing a knowledge base to accelerate to co-create new innovative products and services<< Implementation >>RE-CONNECT partnership is going to implement the following activities:1. Development of a circular tourism collaborative HUB - a platform for climate neutral tourism solutions, cooperation and knowledge sharing. The HUB is dedicated to local tourism staff (hosts, suppliers, operators) to share their experience, challenges and best working practices within a common network. The interactive hub will provide an online environment where tourism and tourism development staff could meet, seek guidance, exchange knowledge and share ideas, concerns and valuable information related to circular tourism development. The online hub will form an integral part of the much-needed online basis for a strong and supportive regional tourism community and network.2. Competence development for greener and more digital tourism. As one of the core project result, by adapting the elements of the existing training programmes of the project partners, a circular tourism training curriculum of offbeat destinations will be developed and tested. From the content related perspective, the training development and implementation will focus on the following topics: Sustainable tourism offers, Selection, planning and booking through a sustainable process, Green transport, Sustainable stay and services (green & safe accommodation, local consumption, waste sorting), Circular tourism development opportunities (stressing on digital solutions). 3. Co-creation pack development on circular tourism. A knowledge pack (guidebook) will be developed on how to accelerate circular tourism projects, products or services through co-creation. All stages of co-creation will be covered with the final goal to offer better tourism services in the involved areas. The co-creation pack will be also tested (through the collaborative hub) and 3 interregional product/service development projects will be qualified.4. Over the main project results, a set of trainings, as well collaborative, learning by doing competnece development activities will be implemented, with extensive involvment of all stakeholders of the tourism ecosystem of offbeat destination.<< Results >>The main result of the project will be 1) dissemination of climate neutral tourism in offbeat destinations; 2) acceleration of the economic potential of rural areas; 3) spreading of green and digital solutions in less favoured areas; 4) significant competence development of the target group.The expected main results are:•Set of digital tools (hub, training curriculum, co-creation pack) on climate neutral tourism products and services•Developed interregional network along circular tourism•3 interregional co-creation-based competence development projects implemented on a learning by doing base and certified with the quality certificate•Learning interactions through staff exchange (within bootcamps for at least 5 participants form each partner regions)•200+ regional tourism hosts, suppliers, service providers trained from 10 countriesBesides this, some more results are created: - In all participating countries the development and the implementation will be carried out to test all PRs outputs. - Each partner will organize one multiplier event. The goal is to promote the developed competence and skill development tools to different target groups, the project's outputs and results achieved as well as importance of promoting and boosting circular tourism at offbeat destinations. - The results under dissemination activity are: dissemination plan, visualization and promotion materials, project website, social media pages and 4 e-newsletters. Additionally, RE-CONNECT partnership will attend to 6 external events/fairs to promote project results.

The vision of FutureFoodS is to collectively achieve environmentally-friendly, socially secure, fair and economically viable healthy and safe Food Systems (FS) for Europe. FutureFoodS gather 87 partners from 22 EU Member States, 6 Associated Countries and 1 third country. FutureFoodS includes public and private actors, policy makers, foundations, locally, sub-nationally, nationally, EU-widely. All these FutureFoodS partners are fully aligned on the vision for the Partnership and the methodology for its implementation in line with SDG17 and EU Green Deal components. This vision has been broken down into general (GO), specific (SO) and operational (OO) objectives applying across the 4 R&I areas and 4 transversal activities identified by the FutureFoods consortium in its stable draft Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda (SRIA) which constitutes the strategic backbone of the project. The four GO cover: GO1 - Functioning of FS; GO2 - System approaches; GO3 - Inclusive government; GO4 - Co-creation cases. These GO have then been translated into SO prioritised in line with the timescale and resources of the Partnership: SO1 - Change the way we eat; SO2- Change the way we process and supply food, SO3 - Change the way we connect with FSs and SO4 - Change the way we govern FS. In addition, 6 interconnected OO have been set: OO1- Pooling R&I resources and programming; OO2 - Operational FS Observatory; OO3 - Active FS knowledge Hub of FS Labs; OO4 - Functioning knowledge sharing and scaling mechanisms; OO5- Revisiting the SRIA; OO6 - Promoting, supporting, widening & gathering FS various communities. The objectives implemented in the 8 WPs of FutureFoodS will exert impact directly or indirectly in most of the destinations of Horizon Europe’s Cluster 6 2023-2024 work programme and particularly for the topic destination ‘Fair, healthy and environment-friendly FS from primary production to consumption’ echoing to the main EU and World FS policies & strategies.

<< Background >>Our project EDUCATE is designed to support adult education organisations in 6 countries (LT, LV, GR, IT, HU, TR) and across Europe in their efforts to deliver inclusive education, especially in the field of digital literacy, which is crucial for the employability of their target groups. This will be achieved both through providing with useful and accessible materials, which they can immediately introduce to their work (in the face of the EDUCATE Sustainability & Monitoring toolkit) and through the creation of a network of adult educators, which exchanges best practices (certified according to a specific set of criteria to be developed) and fosters cooperation (through the EDUCATE Interactive hub).Adult education is a key tool for boosting economic, as well as personal growth, and is an indispensable tool for improving the lives of disadvantaged people and reducing inequalities across the board. Yet, as a 2019 report by the European Association for the Education of Adults shows, countries across Europe are struggling with supporting adult educators in different manners. From low levels of participation (especially in Lithuania), stagnation in the incorporation of innovative practices, to lack of inclusivity and lack of consistency from government policies, adult education providers face numerous hurdles to their effective work. The field now more than ever has the chance and needs its actors to be connected and united in the push for its own transformation, evolution and blossoming.The best approach in transformation of traditional adult education methods is through digitalisation, as well as through efforts, which ensure sustaining and monitoring of constant high quality. Improving digital literacy means proactively using or addressing digital media and technology in education, which ensures inclusiveness for adult learners, what is more it contributes indirectly to the development of their digital competencies. Digital technology has implications for adult literacy; therefore, it is essential to adapt how and what adults learn.Alongside the opportunities that digital adult education offers, there is also a lack of confidence, competence, strategic planning and investment to enable the lifelong learning sector to fully embrace these developments. For that reason, EDUCATE aims to increase capacity of the adult education sector to engage with these two areas through recognition, connection, and useful practical materials. EDUCATE also creates opportunities to raise the profile of and showcase the value of digital adult education, aimed at adult learners with no general skills, low qualifications, or other disadvantaged groups.<< Objectives >>EDUCATE aims to promote quality adult education through supporting open and innovative practices in a digital era. The project objectives could be summarised as follows:– Share certification and guidance for high-quality adult education practice across Europe leading to improved practice and innovation within the European lifelong learning community;– Create effective opportunities for connection, collaboration and mutual learning between adult educators;– Build capacity of adult educators to respond to digitalisation through training that meets their needs, based on monitoring and sustainability approach;– Improve planning and development of digital literacy education of high-quality lifelong learning strategies through increasing awareness and digital methodological skills of adult educators and lifelong learning organisations staff for requirements and best practices for practical application;– Raise awareness of digital adult education within the lifelong learning sector and to policy makers and funders nationally and EU-wide.The target groups for the project are:- Adult educators - the main task of EDUCATE will be to benefit this target group. - Adult learners – the project will promote digital literacy of adult learners through educational methods using digital technologies.<< Implementation >>1. EDUCATE Interactive hub2. EDUCATE Certification of quality3. EDUCATE Sustainability & Monitoring toolkit4. Training adult educators<< Results >>The expected outcomes during the EDUCATE implementation and in the conclusive stage can be outlined in two main categories, highlighting both quantitative and qualitative aspects, as follows:Tangible results:1. EDUCATE Interactive hub that includes platform and a co-creation virtual space in 6 partner languages and in English (EN,LT,LV,GR,IT,HU,TR)2. EDUCATE Certification of quality in 6 partner languages and in English (EN,LT,LV,GR,IT,HU,TR)3. EDUCATE Sustainability & Monitoring toolkit in 7 language versions (EN,LT,LV,GR,IT,HU,TR)4. 12 adult educators from partner organisations trained to deliver digital adult education recognised as high-quality to adult learners with no general skills, low qualifications, or other disadvantaged groups (2 from each partner country)5. 120 stakeholders and policy-makers from partner countries will be involved in co-creation process and they will be informed of project results and invited to sustain the EDUCATE Interactive hub through 3 Multiplier events6. 4200 partner staff members, target groups and stakeholders on both national and European levels informed of project results through dissemination activities carried out during the whole project life cycle7. Project social media profiles - Facebook and Instagram accounts for adult learners and the wider public and LinkedIn professional group for adult educators and other relevant practitioners8. 30 info items related to project goals and results, published on the online platform and social media profiles within project lifetime9. Project management documents - Implementation plan, Quality Assurance plan, Risk management strategy, Dissemination and exploitation plan, Interim progress reports, and Final report.10. Other documents - research synthesis reports, visual identity guidelines, events agenda templates, feedback forms, online statistic reports.Intangible results:1. Adult learners will improve their:- awareness of their qualifications and guidance, mentoring, and further opportunities for adult education;- engagement in the social life of their local communities;- recognition of adult education means to increase the engagement of other adult learners from disadvantaged groups and facilitate their participation;- knowledge and skills of digital literacy through the EDUCATE Interactive hub and open-educational materials.2. Adult educators and lifelong learning organisations staff will improve their:- knowledge and skills in delivering digital adult education as innovate practice through the use of digital technology and media to actually engage adult learners from differentcommunities with the aim of personal and professional development;- skills in using digital adult education tools;- skills in planning, designing, and evaluating digital adult education;- motivation and skills to engage in international collaboration work with other adult educators in;- different skills in the field of community-building and maintaining a diverse and inclusive network or adult education initiative.3. Other partners’ staff will improve their:- awareness on planning, designing, and implementing adult education with recognised certification for high quality;- motivation to use the EDUCATE Interactive hub and engage in the project activities.4. Other stakeholders (adult education providers, lifelong learning platforms, mentoring communities) will improve their:- awareness as to the methodological aspects of engagement of adult learners from different communities;- understanding of the benefits of high-quality education for enhancing and facilitating the environment for sustainable lifelong learning organisations across Europe;- cooperation prospects with peer organisations from different countries and sectors.5. National and EU policymakers will improve their:- evidence base to promote, multiply and mainstream high-quality adult education;- understanding of the needs for strategic investment in adult education

Food_scalEUp is a collaborative project involving 10 organisations covering 11 regions (5 emerging & moderate innovator regions and 6 leader and strong innovator regions, according to the Regional Innovation Scoreboard) in 5 countries. The project long-term vision is to foster the capacity of European regional agri-food digital innovation ecosystems, especially in “emerging” and “moderate” innovator regions, to be more: • connected among their regional stakeholders but also with other European regional ecosystems; thus, advancing towards a European acceleration ecosystem; • effective, by fostering the successful scaling-up of technology start-ups and SMEs; • impactful, in terms of fostering the digital and green transition of the food industry; • resilient; thus, still effective under crisis and highly changing conditions; and • internationally recognised by and attractive for companies from other countries. More specifically, the mission of Food_scalEUp project is to: (i) develop higher quality business acceleration services in agri-food digital innovation ecosystems of emerging and moderate innovator regions; (ii) expand the connections, knowledge exchange, collaboration at regional, European and international level, between key people representing the different actors of the agri-food digital innovation ecosystems involved in the project; and (iii) balance the scaling-up of start-ups and SMEs and the creation of local high-value added jobs in the European regions involved in the project, by balancing the capacity of agri-food digital innovation and acceleration ecosystems in those regions.