Background of the projectKEYSTONE’s addresses four main challenges which, together, threaten the ‘European project’ and EU2020 objectives and targets: the social and economic models that have served us for decades are no longer fit for purpose; a sustainable future cannot be achieved without the active engagement of the individuals who will be forming the core of our future society - European youth; current systems, structures and models are failing young people; social inclusion, education and training models are also not fit for purpose. Set against this background, KEYSTONE's main aim is to develop, implement and evaluate an innovative approach to delivering interventions aimed at the socio-economic inclusion of marginalised young people, based on 'Community Labs'. These Labs aim to explore how at risk young people can play a pivotal role in creating socio-ecological innovations for a sustainable model for change in the EU. Project objectives identify the key drivers and constraints to marginalised young people's participation in social and economic lifedesign and deliver a Collaborative Support Programme in four Community Labs to support the empowerment of marginalised young people and their creativity in four EU cities that enable young people to become co-producers of social innovationsconduct one action research experiment in each Lab aimed at solving a community problem that affects marginalised young peopleevaluate the programme and disseminate the resultsassess and support the replicability and sustainability of the KEYSTONE approach at the wider EU level. ParticipantsPrimary target goup: 100 marginalised young people in four EU cities - Athens, Lisbon, London and Perugia Secondary target group: youth services - at least 1 youth service organisation will host a Community Lab in each cityIndirect target group: 150 stakeholders covering youth organisations, policy-makers, education providers and researchers, reached through the project Multiplier Events Activities carried out Activity 1: Lifeworld Analysis - ethnographic study of 'lived experience' of marginalised young people in the Athens, Lisbon, London and PerugiaActivity 2: Development of The KEYSTONE Technical Platform, tools and Knowledge Space, including a 'K.E.Y' tool for content creation and sharing and an interactive game Activity 3: Development of KEYSTONE Community Labs: 2 Labs were set up in London; 2 in Athens; 1 in Lisbon and 1 in Perugia. Activity 4: Development of KEYSTONE Collaborative Support Programme. The programme combines face-to-face learning workshops with on-line training built around six core modules - Life’s challenges; Needs and Problems; Working with and in the community; Expressing your talent; Education and personal development; Employment opportunities. These are supported with 'extra-curricular' activities like photography and filming walkabouts, Kung Fu sessions, radio broadcasting and podcasting, canoeing, mask making, art gallery events, food sharing events, music events, community journalism, beach combing, waste recycling. Activity 5: Support Programme Implementation and Socio-ecological experiments in 6 Community Labs. The skills acquired through the programme were applied in 7 action research experiments in which the participating young people co-designed and co-produced projects aimed at 'fixing what's broken in their communities'. Activity 6: Evaluation. 'Scientific realist' methodology based on Theory of Change. Evaluation report summarises the project resuts and outcomes.Activity 7: Dissemination & Replication. Dissemination and Sustainability Plan was developed in the early stage of the project and implemented throughout. Activity 8: Project Management. Project management and monitoring tools designed and implemented Results and ImpactOutputs:All planned contract outputs were produced.:IO1 - KEYSTONE Project Infrastructure and Support (including Lifeworld Analysis Report; K.E.Y. Tool and KEYSTONE Interactive Game)IO2 - KEYSTONE Collaborative Support ProgrammeIO3 - Transferability ToolkitKEYSTONE Evaluation ReportAchievements against key targets:177 marginalised young people participate (target: 100). 120 sign up for the CSP programme; 77 complete the programme.7 action research experiments implemented (Target: 4).2646 visits to website over project duration (target: 5000). 2,000 organisations receive project leaflet/brochure (Target, 1,000). 133 stakeholders attend national multiplier events and final Round Table (target: 150) 76 stakeholder organisations involved in Community Labs (target: 30).OutcomesMarginalised youth empowered, re-engaged and their horizons and life chances expandedYouth services more effective, relevant and joined upCommunity social capital enhanced; reduction in tensions and conflict

The project intends to support the professional development of teachers by strengthening their relational competences through a training programme combining the methodologies of e-learning, micro-learning, and gaming. The training programme will deal with the following themes: 1] education (teacher-pupil relationship); 2] participation (communication with the pupils’ parents; 3] co-operation (relationship between peers and between the diverse organisational levels).During the project an online course for teachers will be designed and produced, along with a simulated practice educational game and guidelines for transferring the project results by implementing sustainable Permanent Laboratories for Soft Skills. Institutional stakeholders will be engaged in a participatory design process for developing a medium-long-term strategy to incorporating soft skills in the curricula of training course for teachers.The project intends to train 300 teachers during the educational experiment, and imoact on the participants in terms of improvement of relational skills, development of reflective practice, improvement of assertive response to stressful situations, improvement of thr quality of the relationship with the pupils and with the pupils’ parents; increase in self-esteem; effective communication in everyday’s professional practice.

CONTEXT AND NEEDOver 26 million - almost 29% of the 90 million young people aged 15-29 in the EU - are at risk of poverty and social exclusion when rated on the AROPE (at risk of poverty or exclusion) scale. These young people desperately need high quality, accessible opportunities to participate in, and contribute to, their communities. Partners from Belgium, PT, UK, Italy, Spain, France and Romania will be collaborating on working with Innovation Intelligence and Fundraising as an innovative and engaging tool to promote youth participation.Through enhancing the capability and the skills of the youth workers and of young people in the domain of innovation intelligence and fundraising, this project has the long term obective to give young people a chance to increase their commitment and participation to civil society life. OBJECTIVES AND METHODSThe project will produce - with elements co-created and tested with 60 young people (15 per partner):- a Toolkit for youth workers, youth organizations and young people, useful in general to all those who want to take part in a fundraising activity and to be involved in a process to increase organizational intelligence in the sense of innovation - a -coaching set and a knowledge community - a training camp for young people from each partner. The camp will focus on co-creating with the young people elements of the toolkit and coaching sets. - an evaluation framework to assess the impact of takeover days using participatory methods INNOVATIONThe project provides youth workers in BE, ES, PT, UK, RO with new ways of using informal learning to encourage the participation of young people, to help youth workers and young people to increase their participation and their commitment to the Youth Environment

The role of regional governments in promoting integrated lifelong learning policies has been recognised as very important since many years and many studies and initiatives have been undertaken to conceptualise and review good practices and policy arrangements (such as CEDEFOP, OECD, German Learning region Programme, RELL project, LLHUB project and others). However, the policy context has not always been favourable to a comprehensive lifelong learning approach (not merely focused on professional development of employed workers), nor to enhance the role of Regions in the broad education field. This dichotomy between discourse and praxis has generated a fragmentary situation, in which some regions across Europe continue to be seriously committed to lifelong learning but, lacking continuing and reliable financial and political support, are unable to undertake sustainable exchange of experience among them and to systematically compare their progresses and learn from each other.The present proposal aims to design an open collaborative platform to enhance and compare Regional Lifelong Learning Policies: the COMORELP Policy Lab Platform, capitalising the results of previous initiatives and EU Projects, developing a coherent conceptual and operational framework. These results will be achieved with a strict focus on building the sustainability conditions for the monitoring exercise, thus overcoming the fragmented situation described above. The concrete objectives of the project are the following:· To organise a longitudinal review of LLL policies in each participating region, including a multi-stakeholders self-assessment exercise;· To review and synthesise existing contributions on regional lifelong learning and “Learning Regions” approaches to develop a new context-sensitive comparison/benchmarking platform;· To pilot a data collection approach to feed and validate the system among the pilot Partner Regions· To organise regional and European inter-regional Round Table to exchange and reflect upon practices in the field of Lifelong Learning and lay the foundations for inter-regional cooperation and common LLL policies· To promote the participation in the COMORELP Policy Lab Platform of new Regions and to develop a sustainability action plan.· To draw lessons from the process, both in terms of quality assurance and in terms of policy recommendations.The project will create the opportunity, for Regional Governments who are committed to Lifelong Learning, the opportunity to review, compare and enhance their policies through the systematic collaboration with other Regions and the establishment of a mutual learning process involving stakeholders and national/EU policy-makers, thus contributing to a renewed dialogue on lifelong learning at the EU level, also in relation with the first point of the recently agreed European Pillar of Social Rights. The expected results and impact envisaged and potential longer term benefits such as increasing participant awareness on the Lifelong Learning policies upon regional bases and make comparisons to rebuild or reorganize their own policies by detecting deficiencies or gaining alternative perspective from other contributors such as stakeholders, other regions or policy makers. Existing data collected on the platform will be the starting point for further evolvements and extensions by the participants. The COMORELP Policy Lab Platform aimed to evolve after the end of the project and build a broader community of users, coming from all other European and Third countries, stakeholders and regional bodies not originaly involved in the project.

ContextThe COVID-19 pandemic took virtually everyone by surprise. In the face of unprecedented disruption to work, life and well-being, one of the key features of the response to COVID-19 disruption was the rapid acceleration of digital technologies into all aspects of human activity – from shopping through education to medical consultations. Many people were left behind as a result of this shift – from families on low income with no means to afford the digital tools needed for home schooling to older people who did not know how to access health services online. In this context, there is a need for education and training systems to become more flexible and resilient so as to deliver high quality and inclusive learning particularly for those affected by ‘dual exclusion’ – the process through which structural inequalities are exacerbated by lack of access to digital technologies and digital skills. This process of re-adjustment needs to start with educators, who need to acquire the digital and pedagogical competences needed to work effectively with people who suffer 'dual exclusion', and who need support to transition into a rapidly evolving digital economy. Objectives•To build on existing EU competence frameworks – in particular 'DigCompEdu' – to develop a flexible digital competence framework for educators working in the VET sector•To incorporate a set of competences that enables educators to use digital tools to work with vulnerable groups, so as to in turn improve their digital competences and knowledge•To embed the framework in ‘situational knowledge-based practice’ so as to support educators to understand how to apply digital competences in real teaching and learning situations•To develop an online learning programme – using micro-learning and game-based learning - to enable educators to acquire these competences and apply them in practice•To pilot the programme with 200 learners in four different VET contexts – school-based vocational training, college and further education training, vocational training for vulnerable young people and continuing vocational training for adult learners•To disseminate the project results to a wide stakeholder constituency including policy-makers, educators, youth organisations and the research community•To develop a Toolkit for scaling the programme up and outParticipants200 VET educators from school through to higher education, particularly those working with vulnerable and disadvantaged groups, who take part in the FLEXI-COMP training programme, with an additional 200 educators trying out the programme through a 'Call for Participation' in the second half of the projectActivitiesReview of state of the art to assess relevant digital competence frameworks and training programmes for disadvantaged learners and digitally excludedLifeworld analysis, working with digitally excluded groups to identify their digital needs and the barriers to participation in the digital economyDevelopment of digital competence framework and pedagogic model Development of learning platform and tools to run the training programmeDevelopment of training programme, including micro-learning, blogging and online gameProgramme piloting with 200 VET educatorsEvaluation of programmeDevelopment of sustainability Plan and Transferability ToolkitFLEXI-COMP combines two overarching methodologies to deliver project objectives and results. Firstly, design thinking' applies a five stage process to solve the ‘presenting problem’ of dual exclusion in 'human-centric' ways, by focusing on what’s most important from the perspective of 'users' and by applying 'out of the box' and 'disruptive' ideas to address the presenting problem. Secondly, ‘Theory of Change’ provides a road map for the project, specifies its key milestones and outputs; what’s needed to achieve these and what changes are expected as a result. Within this overall framework, the project applies a number of methods, including a ‘situational knowledge-based’ model of defining competences; ‘lifeworld analysis’ to capture the needs, lived experience and 'critical incidents' faced by people who are digitally left behind; co-design methods to develop the pedagogy for the training programme and a combination of micro-learning, blogging and an interactive game to deliver it.Expected Results90% of 200 programme participants successfully complete 70% report high satisfaction Educators increase their understanding of how digital tools can be applied in teaching practice, and how they can be used to deliver quality and inclusive learningEducators increase their core and inclusion-specific digital competences Long term benefitsDisadvantaged learners improve their digital skills and life opportunitiesVET institutions improve the quality and inclusiveness of their provision