According to European Commission, social innovations are new ideas that meet social needs, create social relationships and form new collaborations. These innovations can be products, services or models addressing unmet needs more effectively. The European Commission's objective is to encourage market uptake of innovative solutions and stimulate employment. The Commission’s actions on social innovation stem from the Innovation Union initiative (2010) and of the Social Investment Package (2013). These actions facilitate the inducement, uptake and scaling-up of social innovation solutions. The main objectives are: - promoting social innovation as a source of growth and jobs - sharing information about social innovation in Europe - supporting innovative entrepreneurs and mobilising investors and public organisations. Sport innovation is dynamic and affects areas such as sport management, emergence of new sports, social and community-based development in sport. Social innovation arises when sport organizations, groups or individuals (such as athletes and coaches) are faced with social issues that requires new and creative solutions. In this way, social innovation encourages solutions to complex social issues in sport contexts. Social issues as an aspect of sport innovation concern grassroots and ‘sport for all programs’ with an overall aim of contributing to greater social justice and equality in sport. This dynamic aspect of sport innovation includes opportunities for new marginalized social groups to participate and compete in sport, for example, through the introduction and creation of events such as the Paralympic Games, The Special Olympics or the ‘Homeless World Cup’ in football. With regard to this insight, SPINVET project seeks to address the following identified needs of VET for sport field in social innovation at the EU level: - Current curricula implemented by VET institutions responsible for VET of sports professionals are insufficient to train qualified sports managers to meet the needs of the sports labor market.- Social innovation in sports is a relatively new but rapidly developing field. There is no innovative course curriculum on social innovation that VET institutions in the field of sport can apply.- Trainers/lecturers responsible for VET of sports managers need innovative educational resources on social innovation.- The social innovation competencies of the sports professionals in the labor market are not sufficient.- Sports professionals in the labor market need open and digital learning platforms and training resources to improve their social innovation knowledge, skills and competences. With this scope, the overall objectives of the project are to contribute to smart, sustainable and inclusive growth in Europe by; - supporting professional development of VET trainers/lecturers in sport field and- developing social innovation competencies for sports professionals working in sport organizations (non-profit and for profit). The specific aims of the project are: - to develop a course curriculum that addresses the challenges faced by sports managers in the development and delivery of innovative products, services and processes for the sports sector in order to contribute the solving of social problems and- to improve the social innovation competencies of sports managers with digital, open and innovative learning platform and training resources. The target groups of the project who benefit from the project products and took part in the projects’ activities are as follows: 1) Direct target group: sports managers, sport professionals, VET trainers/lecturers in the sport field, partner organizations and their staff 2) Indirect target group: Sport organizations, VET organizations/institutions, universities, training providers, trainers/lecturers of target organizations Intellectual Outputs (IOs) IO-1: A Course curriculum on social innovation in the field of sportIO-2: A Gamification based interactive learning platform for sports managers Work Packages (WPs): WP-1: Project management and implementation activitiesWP-2: Research activities (collection of evidence-based data via informal way, field research activities, focus group meetings)WP-3: Development of a course curriculum on social innovation in the field of sport and development of a gamification based interactive learning platform for sports managersWP-4: Online pilot scheme for sports managers to test the interactive learning platform (including short-term learning activity for VET trainers in the sport field)WP-5: Reporting (Progress and Final Report) and Dissemination Activities

"The current project ""Optimal use of ICT opportunities for educational and scientific conferences in global crises"" is aimed at improving the quality of higher education in conditions caused by crises similar to COVID-19. One of the specific characteristics of higher education as a high value of the knowledge created and transferred in education is the activity for organizing and conducting educational-scientific conferences. The sharp need for education and science to move entirely to distance form due to the pandemic caused by COVID-19 has placed a number of universities that have reached a high level of scientific and educational credibility in a state of lack of preparedness and ability to maintain the level of conference events. To help universities maintain the quality they have achieved in the traditional academic standard, the partnership on this project will focus its efforts on illuminating the specifics of distance learning when organizing conference events in all components of organization and conduct, technical dimensions and recommendations. , as well as the qualification of the academic staff in the universities. This structures the project into three main activities - development of an intellectual product ""Guidelines for organizing and conducting conferences in remote form"" (the basis of project implementation), conducting training for teachers in order to gain sufficient understanding of the specific approach and new dimensions of quality and lastly, holding real conference events by the three university institutions. The partnership covers university institutions from Bulgaria, Romania, Serbia (sports sciences), and an organization specializing in distance education from Malta. The project emphasizes the aspiration of the partners to achieve a significant regional impact along with the European challenges for general digital education. The target group of the project presents in the first place the teachers in the institutions of higher education. Upon completion of the project, the results of the implementation will be expressed in the following:-a tool will be created to actively confront obstacles in the educational process in emergencies such as the COVID-19 crisis and the need to move remotely to university activities;-conditions will be created for increasing the number of participants (including foreign ones) in educational and scientific conferences with a significant reduction of the spent resources;-a prerequisite will be created for increasing the use of distance conferences in the learning process through the developed skills of teachers to include them as a teaching method;-a document will be available - Guidelines for organizing and conducting remote conferences;-the widest possible access to the document at European and international level will be ensured by presenting it in English;-regional use will be achieved through translations into Bulgarian, Romanian and Serbian;-will create a basis for objectively establishing the quality of digital conferences as a means of developing education and science;-the qualification of lecturers, who are an active part of the participants in conferences organized in digital form, will be increased.The achieved results of the project will have an impact mainly on the quality of higher education and communication of scientific knowledge. In the emergency of pandemics such as those caused by COVID-19 or other global crises, academics will have a much calmer acceptance of the need to transfer academic life to a remote environment. The achieved goal - created conditions for organizing and conducting quality educational and scientific conferences will affect different levels of functioning of higher education systems, and in the first place the impact will affect the project participants, institutions, higher education systems and maintenance of the quality of HE."

The strategic partnership among Associació Alba (Spain), Viduskurzeme primary school - development center (Latvia), ROC Noorderpoort (Netherlands), Consorzio Solidarietà Sociale Forlì-Cesena società cooperativa sociale (Italy), Inspire - Eden and Razzett Foundation (Malta) and Universitatea Nationala de Educatie Fizica si Sport din Bucharesti (Romania) - organizations that, among other things, work to meet the needs of people with disabilities and/or special needs - seeks to encourage cooperation, exchange of good practices and exploitation of synergies in order to solve a common problem in all of them: the low participation of young people with disabilities and/or special needs in community-based organisations. Thus, the project seeks to promote the creation of links between partner organizations and community-based organisations; to boost the professional development of certain professionals of the partner organizations in order to activate community cooperation initiatives; to train young people to meet their own needs; and to establish a transnational network composed of specialists in the field of disability with a complementary, multidisciplinary and sustainable nature.Some of the partner organizations belong to the educational sector and others to the youth sector, but networking with the local community is fundamental in the structure of all of them when it comes to serve part of the group they work with. Therefore, the project establishes for each of the six organizations to send a delegation composed of two professionals to the headquarters of one of the respective partners based on the characteristics and interests of the parties so that they acquire certain knowledge and subsequently can use it back home. In addition, CIVIC also contemplates the development of a joint training course combined with networking activities - with the participation of two members of each of the partner organizations - with the aim of training certain professionals and promoting the creation and/or strengthening of synergies among all partner organizations.Concerning the methodology used to guarantee the success of the project, special emphasis is placed on a selection process based on skills and motivations, a regular and efficient communication flow between the parties involved and the exchange of good practices through observation, training and networking. CIVIC intends to produce a relevant impact mainly on participants, on partner organisations and their members - young people with disabilities and/or special needs - and on the corresponding local communities. This impact is expected to appear as an exchange of knowledge, skills, perspectives and points of view and to be materialized through increased youth participation, revitalization and development of community life.In addition, the project is also expected to produce cross-cutting results through a three-year transnational cooperation plan between partner organizations. In the long term, we are sure that an adequate development of the project will contribute to the achievement of the strategic objectives that the six organizations have. In addition, we hope that the example of the participants will become a stimulus for other workers in the field of education and/or youth to be encouraged to participate in similar transnational mobility projects.