SOCIO-BEE proposes that community engagement and social innovation combined with Citizen Science (CS) through emerging technologies and playful interaction can bridge the gap between the capacity of communities to adopt more sustainable behaviours aligned with environmental policy objectives and between the citizen intentions and the real behaviour to act in favour of the environment (in this project, to reduce air pollution). Furthermore, community engagement can raise other citizens’ awareness of climate change and their own responses to it, through experimentation, better monitoring, and observation of the environment. This idea is emphasised in this project through the metaphor of bees’ behaviour (with queens, working and drone bees as main CS actors), interested stakeholders that aim at learning from results of CS evidence-based research (honey bears) and the Citizen Science hives as incubators of CS ideas and projects that will be tested in three different pilot sites (Ancona, Marousi and Ancona) and with different population: elderly people, everyday commuters and young adults, respectively. The SOCIO-BEE project ambitions the scalable activation of changes in citizens’ behaviour in support of pro-environment action groups, local sponsors, voluntary sector and policies in cities. This process will be carried out through low-cost technological innovations (CS enablers within the SOCIO BEE platform), together with the creation of proper instruments for institutions (Whitebook and toolkits with recommendations) that will contribute to the replication, upscaling, massive adoption and to the duration of the SOCIO-BEE project. The solution sustainability and maximum outreach will be ensured by proposing a set of public-private partnerships schemes and innovative targeted communication means to streamline exploitation and accessibility to the project impacts.

The vision of FOSTER is to build a foundation from which a new Knowledge and Innovation System (KIS) for Europe’s food system can emerge. The current structure is insufficient to address the emerging challenges of nourishing people in a healthy and sustainable way. Key objective is to gain insights into how it can be built to be more inclusive and better governed. FOSTER shall help to transform Europe’s food system outcomes and will achieve this by: - building a FOSTER Platform including food system-state of the art knowledge, foresight by semi-automated Horizon scanning, trend and threats-analysis and new multi-dimensional scenarios of EU food systems to 2040; - implementing the FOSTER Academy -including 4 Summer Schools- for integrating food system-related disciplines and citizen science to enhance food system understanding across the ERA; - initiating and assessing a co-creation and co-learning process within six national resp. regional Citizen Driven Initiatives (CDIs), in which new knowledge, strategies and Action Research Agendas are gained; - scaling out and deep CDIs solutions and approaches to other territorial contexts; - studying different R&I mechanisms of policy support for mission-oriented R&I policy for food systems transformation, and analysing and ground-proofing them in each CDI; - strengthening science-policy interfaces by co-learning processes with external experts and developing recommendations for food systems R&I policies tailored to different geographies and sectors; - identifying the trigger points to help ‘unlock’ system lock-ins and support further dynamics towards system transformation; - and applying reflective monitoring on all FOSTER’s co-learning activities to develop insights into how the KIS can be broadened from an agricultural-KIS to a food system-KIS. To inspire adoption of FOSTER learnings, over 20 workshops and a final conference will be conducted; scientific position papers and policy briefs will be widely communicated.

STEP CHANGE (Science Transformation in EuroPe through Citizens involvement in HeAlth, coNservation and enerGy rEsearch) replies to the H2020 Topic SwafS 27 on “Hands-on citizen science and frugal innovation”, Sub-topic A, citizen science. The project, coordinated by the University of Primorska, is based on the assumption that citizen science (CS) can play an even broader societal and scientific role than it is generally acknowledged, particularly in those critical fields of research (like Energy, Health and the Environment) where human and non-human factors are deeply entangled. In these areas, a set of highly-contested, socially relevant research fields is emerging where CS can play a pivotal role by making science more socially robust, inclusive and democratic while strengthening the capacity of scientific investigation over emerging phenomena that cannot be easily caught within narrow disciplinary boundaries. Then, STEP CHANGE was designed to contribute to making the most of CS potentialities, while at the same time identifying, analysing, and tackling such limitations and risks. In this regard, STEP-CHANGE is based on the implementation of five Citizen Science Initiatives (CSIs) in the areas of Energy, Environment, Health and Infectious Diseases, through the participatory and self-reflexive analysis and evaluation of their collaborative research processes, scientific outcomes and societal impacts. The CSIs regard: 1) wildlife conservation in Slovenia (UP); 2) non-alcoholic fatty liver disease in the UK (TGI, NIHR and OUXF); 3); energy communities in Germany (WECF); 4) infectious disease outbreak preparedness in Italy (UNITOV); 5) off-grid renewable energy in agriculture in Uganda (ARUWE). Horizontal activities are also foreseen: Scoping process (SfC), Participatory evaluation (K&I, AU), Mutual learning and training (ZSI), Stocktaking (ECSA) and Communication (EUSEA). The consortium is geographically balanced and formed by 13 partners, from 7 European countries and Uganda.

"<< Background >>Encouraging interest in science for youth is vital to address the shortage of scientific vocations in Europe. School science attitudes tend to be positive in primary school but decline through secondary school education. One of the main cited reasons is the mismatch between the school science curriculum and the scientific issues of interest to young people. For instance, while the experiments designed for school labs provide an excellent introduction to the scientific method's foundations, they hardly offer opportunities to understand all the scientific research steps truly. On the other hand, soft skills such as communication, work ethics, and entrepreneurship are more necessary than ever because both the market labour and the society are changing rapidly due to the so-called megatrends (globalisation, digitalisation, climate change and societal change). In this view, all European countries are implementing the European framework of Key Competences for Lifelong Learning and the European Commission encourage cooperation between different learning settings (e.g. formal and non formal education). From their parts schools are more and more participating in citizen science projects. Citizen science is an informal science activity enabling the pupils to experience an authentic scientific project and understand the environmental issues affecting their nearby environment from the perspective of lifelong learning. Regrettably, the vast majority of citizen science projects are contributory involving pupils in data collection and reporting, which fits better primary and lower secondary school educational objectives.The main barriers for the implementation of citizen science projects that involve the teachers and their pupils in all the phases of a scientific study (co-created citizen science) are:•The concerns raised by the scientific community about the quality of the obtained data and results.• Most teachers have never participated in scientific investigations. It is therefore challenging for them to approach scientists for co-designing a scientific research project.• curriculum constraints.The European Reference Framework for key competences outlines eight interdependent key competences for lifelong learning necessary to better adapt European education to the changing realities of the 21st century. Nevertheless, most educators across Europe face the challenge of finding strategies to implement these competences within the different subject areas pragmatically. The main issue is that these competences are cross-curricular and non-subject specific, while school time tables are built upon single subject lessons. On the other hand, citizen science involves aspects related to these competences as active learning inside and outside the school and collaboration with universities, research centres and communities.<< Objectives >>The Raise-CS project will tackle the issues and needs mentioned above in the frame of the relatively recent research field of microplastic pollution that is causing global ecological and human health concerns.The overall goal of the ""Raise-CS"" project is twofold: - To lay the groundwork for implementing an EU-wide citizen science programme run in a robust and harmonised manner by secondary schools, and;- To root citizen science in the European reference framework of key competences for lifelong learning with the view to integrating this practice in secondary schools curricula and use the sailboat as a motivation factor and a tool to develop interpersonal and soft skillsTo reach this goal, we have set the following specific objectives :1- To demonstrate that secondary schools can generate reliable and useful data and knowledge within the research field of microplastic pollution;2- To associate citizen science with the eight key competences for lifelong learning and integrate the activities in a cross-disciplinary manner.3- To empower science teachers to connect and actively collaborate with the scientific community.4- To build a strategic roadmap for implementing an EU-wide scale microplastic pollution monitoring carried out by secondary schools in collaboration with the scientific community and relevant stakeholders.<< Implementation >>To achieve our objectives we will:-Identify, through a literature survey, analytical methods that can be implemented in secondary school’s labs and write standard Operating Procedures -Run in-house method validation according to international standards and making use of microplastic reference materials (Operator: scientist)-Transfer of the methods to a secondary school chemistry lab (Operator: Teacher)-Realise inclusive citizen science campaigns and assess microplastic pollution using the validated methods-Present the obtained results to the scientific community-Realise environmental awareness campaigns for the large publicThe sailboat will be used in this project as a motivation factor for the students and to build bridges between formal and non-formal education.<< Results >>We will provide the following results:1- Robust Methods for assessing microplastic pollution in aquatic environments that can be implemented in upper secondary schools.The methods will be accompanied by: a- validation reports corroborating that the methods are evaluated and tested according to requirements of international standards to produce valid results b- Method transfer report corroborating that the methods are suitable for use within a secondary school chemistry lab. c- standalone training courses consisting of video tutorials with additional explanations and background information. The video tutorials are intended for teachers and, even more particularly to pupils as they might lack knowledge of equipment used in the lab. This will enable them to spend more time deepening their understanding of the procedure than troubleshooting the experiment.d- Guidelines on how to transfer any analytical methods to secondary chemistry labs.2- Guidelines on how to associate citizen science activities to the key competences and integrate them within secondary schools in a cross-disciplinary manner.3- A strategic roadmap and a catalogue of guidelines for implementing an EU-wide harmonised monitoring of microplastic pollution in aquatic environments co-created by secondary schools."

Assuring environmental compliance requires a strong network of stakeholders, from citizens and researchers to governments and environmental organisations. Through creative toolkits and protocols, ENFORCE aims to tackle the frequent mismatch between the environmental data gathered by citizens and what authorities require for enforcement purposes. The project will address the challenges in data reporting coming from both the citizens side and the authorities’ side, in order for the obtained data to be usable for environmental enforcement. In this line, ENFORCE introduces the concept of Data Readiness Level (DRL) to assess the maturity of data to be used as evidence in environmental compliance cases. In addition, the project will capitalize on the use of geo-spatial intelligence and AI-enhanced tools, strengthening their capacities, promoting good practices and preparing an inventory on geo-spatial intelligence and AI use. The proposed solution will ensure alignment with the Green Deal Data Space to ensure trustworthy data exchange among the relevant stakeholders. The project encompasses 8 case studies that involve all relevant actors including grassroots organizations, local and regional authorities and a diverse group of experienced researchers forming a scientifically robust interdisciplinary team. The lessons learnt and evaluation results from the case studies will feed the replication guidelines that will be promoted through the ENFORCE capacity building programme and associated policy recommendations to create a multiplier effect for the adoption of citizen science data to support environmental compliance.