The EU is currently facing a paradox: while the youth employment rate stands at 16.1%, there are around 2 million unfilled vacancies across Europe. It has been elaborated that this paradox might be attributed to the fact that “a high number of employers cannot find the right mix of skills in the job market, especially with regard to e-skills.”(Eurostat, 2017, app.1,pt.5). The explanation has been supported by employers themselves who when recruiting young people, look first and foremost for the right attitude and aptitude to enable young people to be effective in the workplace. In particular, 5 key competences are foreseen: - Communication - Adaptability / flexibility - Creative thinking - Problem Solving - Teamwork In order to overcome this skills mismatch, better VET provision is needed to include those soft skills and better prepare the youth entrance on the labor market. The main objective of STRATAGAME is to support young people in acquiring and developing key soft employability, developing an effective open and innovative education through the use of ICT and contributing to professional development of the VET teachers by including common methodologies for introducing soft employability in curricula. These objectives were achieved by providing VET teachers with specific tools enabling them to include soft skills teaching in their professional activity, by developing an online diagnostic test to assess the soft skills of young people such as communication, adaptability/flexibility, creative thinking, problem solving and teamwork; by creating an online game to let young people and VET leaders develop the above mentioned soft skills and by providing to VET teachers electronic guides, equipping VET teachers with digital guides on didactic methods for incorporating the diagnostic test and the online game on soft skills within wider classroom activities. Partners are 7 entities from 5 European countries including Romania, Spain, Italy, Poland, and Turkey. All of them are educational providers and or stakeholders working for territorial development and labor insertion thanks to better adequation of skills to the market demands. The working team created for the implementation of STRATAGAME work under the leadership of the Romanian partner CDA: Arad Development Center. Then, STRATAGAME involves in the project activities two main target groups: VET teachers, including I-VET and C-VET formal, non-formal, and informal providers from all kinds of subjects and specialization to integrate soft skills among their activities. At least 140 VET teachers were planned to be directly involved in the development of project products. As the second target, STRATAGAME addresses young people understood as VET learners and potential VET learners facing the need for soft skills to facilitate their labor market integration. Again, at least 140 young people were planned to be directly engaged during the development of the project outputs. Finally, STRATAGAME also works with educational stakeholders such as VET institutions and teachers associations, youth associations, business associations, employment services, among others, with the aim of widening the outputs diffusion and impact. Description of activities STRATAGAME developed three main products: 1) A Diagnostic test, made of a set of psychometric questions and which aimed at drawing an evaluation of the youth level of competences in the 5 key soft skills addressed. This tool is helping teachers to assess their students' level of knowledge and provides young people with a deeper self-understanding. 2) An online game, which has the form of one building with 5 rooms, each one presenting a new challenge corresponding to one of the 5 competencies. 3) Electronic guides, which are supporting tools given to the teachers with teaching notes related to the online games, new scenarios for classroom implementation, sources of information and references on soft skills theoretical contents, best practices, etc. The methodology used for the development of STRATAGAME products relies upon educational gamification theory. The idea behind it is that learners are motivated and remind better the knowledge while entertaining. Also, it is participative and interactive, based on real cases and a contextual approach. Results and impact The project brings important impact on VET teachers by providing them with a selection of innovative didactic tools to apply within current methodologies and the daily classroom while getting increased teaching effectiveness, an increased understanding of the employer's’ requirements, and higher overall job satisfaction and motivation for Continuous Professional Development- The project has a positive impact on youth by developing their soft skills with the use of online tools resulting in an increased professional potential, an increased level of awareness of their own soft skills, increased confidence in their employability potential, and higher chances of getting a job. Soft skills are crucial not only in the workplace but also in daily life. By developing soft skills in the classroom, young people increase their chances of success within such fields as completion of assignments (time management), peer relationships (teamwork), and job hunting (networking). As long term benefits, partners expect to contribute to a better-trained youth generation able to be more efficient at the time of answering to employers expectation, thanks to an overcome of soft skills mismatch.

In the context of innovation-divided Europe and scarce consultancy in RDI, Macro Region 4 Romania is facing its peak of natural development and moving towards its "turning point". The core members of the Ro-Boost SMEs consortium are aware that it is time for smart action in order to achieve the goal of reducing the innovation divide among companies. Based on the vision stated in the Ro-Boost SMEs Implementation Strategy, the core members of the consortium jointly elaborated the project "Ro-Boost Inno SMEs" that is aiming to consolidate innovative businesses - rooted into the Smart Specialisation Strategy - and to expand their position within the sector global value chains. As being ambitious, this goal can be achieved by "surgical" interventions, bringing added value to SMEs and innovative sectors, using an innovative delivery system and by setting up a vibrant community of innovators. The proposal is built around relevant institutions at Macro Region 4 level, using in-depth competences of our experts to create success regarding the indicators, satisfaction among clients, impact at macro regional level and innovation culture within business environment.

"<< Background >>The inclusion of culture in the pillars of sustainable development underscores its value both in terms of its economic benefits and its significant contribution to humanitarian development as a link between achieving a balance between the economic, social and environmental goals of sustainability. Moreover, in modern reality cultural creation is very often considered a ""vehicle"" for the transition of economies locally and nationally from the declining post-industrial landscape to thriving cultural economies or from the primary to the tertiary sector effectively. Nevertheless, conceptual difficulties such as what is a cultural asset and what is not, but also practical ones such as the difficulty of measurably evaluating the contribution of culture, create a rather complex environment for the development of the creative and cultural industries. Creators and organizations based on modern political and economic conditions are invited to operate entrepreneurship so that they can ensure financial self-sufficiency through a financial mix, to combine their artistic aspirations, cultural and social purposes with sustainable economic results and to strategically plan their actions and use the appropriate tools so that their activity and contribution is quantified so that it can be evaluated more adequately and in financial terms.The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the need to implement all of the above quickly and effectively while highlighting the significant contribution of new technologies and the Internet to achieving these goals. The need for creators and organizations to acquire soft and hard digital, entrepreneurial and networking skills is imperative in order to respond to the current conditions but also to ensure their viability and resilience in the short and long term in an ever-unpredictably changing environment. In addition, it is essential that cultural administrators and cultural policy makers map and evaluate as soon as possible the new needs of the creative and cultural sectors in order to directly and effectively contribute to their coverage. The “Rethinking Cultural & Creative Industries” project through digital and entrepreneurial competencies aims to meet all the above needs.<< Objectives >>The “Rethinking Cultural & Creative Industries” project will be an accelerator in the transmission of new knowledge and the acquisition of digital and business skills for workers in the creative and cultural sectors. Its purpose is to be an example of good practice in culture in relation to the effective and immediate response to crises and transitions in an era identified with the rapid speed of change in all aspects of human activity. Its aim is to function as a hub of education, networking, and empowerment of cultural activity in line with the modern professional and expressive needs of the creators, the goals of the European Union but also the global cultural, social and economic conditions and requirements. Based on four pillars (1. Resilience of the Creative and Cultural industries, 2. Diversity of Cultural Expressions in the digital era, 3. Support of the contribution of culture to sustainable development, 4. Equal and balanced representation of all creative and cultural industries in the digital era) will catalyze the immediate and induced needs of the creative and cultural sectors through a set of activities. Immediate priority is to develop an innovative training and capacity building path for operators of creative and cultural sectors giving an answer to the new competences that are required by the sector to reactivate and rethink itself after COVID19 pandemic. The entrepreneurial, digital and resilience competences targeted by the project have been recognized as priority competences from the sector in order to face not only the consequences of the pandemic but also to align itself with the future of jobs and the future of economy. The project is therefore developing a path sector to provide a concrete answer to a specific market need.<< Implementation >>The activities of the project will be prepared, designed and implemented to empower and enable target groups to get digital competences and entrepreneurial skills to transit smoothly in digital and post COVID19 era. All project activities are designed to achieve this goal.The activities that will be implemented are: Desk Research, Training Course, a Handbook and a Learning Hub for Cultural and Creative Industries Professionals to gain digital and entrepreneurial competencies.Τhe specific needs of CCI’s workers through Desk Research will be examined. The results of the research will provide valuable insights about the preparation, design and the content of the training for CCIs. In that context, the training Course will be based on modern methodologies like design thinking, adapted to the needs and the characteristics of the Creative and Cultural Industries Professionals. In addition the train trainers activity will ensure the proper preparation of trainers in order to provide an efficient and interactive training to the target group. The training course will be promoted together with a handbook through special multiplier events delivered to relevant stakeholders from the partners’ countries, interested in the development of the CCIs, mainly of professional development of the artists, professionals, managers, cultural operators from the sector. Specifically, the handbook will allow those who will approach the training without the support of the partnership to be able to plan, organize, deliver training session individually or for groupsA dynamic Learning Hub based on a human-centred model will be created to provide exchange of ideas and good practices between EU countries (partners), networking area, educational content. The Hub adapts to the needs that will be identified through the programme and expanded based on the participation of the collaborating organizations of the trainers and the creators.The whole project will follow a co-design approach ensuring that the target group’s needs, preferences and concerns are taken into consideration for the design and development of the activities. The multiplier events will ensure the distribution and the amplification of educational material and project’s outcome where the educational hub hosts the material and enables the target group to connect with their community and share experiences and concerns.<< Results >>The partnership will work to develop both tangible and intangible outcomes from this project.Tangible are linked to project results and specifically are:A Competency Framework for CCIs in the 21st-century post-pandemic scenario detailing and describing the new competences or innovation in existing ones needed by the CCIs after COVID pandemic A Training Course that will cover competences highlighted in Competency Framework for CCIs professionals and intermediaries to cover the dimension of entrepreneurship and digital competences for resilience and innovation A Learning Hub for creative and cultural professionals to find elements but also opportunities to exchange with other players and actors of the sector their experiences, know how and for training providers to contribute to a common knowledge with their own training tools and methods for the sector An Handbook that allows those who will approach the training without the support of the partnership to be able to plan, organize, deliver training session individually or for groups Intangible are linked to the impact the project will generate on the main target group and other stakeholders to be engaged and specifically:awareness raising on the needs for more entrepreneurial and digital savvy Creative and Cultural Sector;competences growth in entrepreneurship and digital dimension for European Creative and Cultural Sector building a common knowledge for intermediaries of the sector and training providers on the innovation brought by the project in terms of competences and learning offerinnovate the training offer for the sector on both entrepreneurial and digital literacycontribution to the European debate on the role of CCIs in European economy and their impact on societyAdditionally, the project will have spill-over effects such as:Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions in Εuropean Digital EraSupporting the contribution of culture to sustainable development by cover the new cultural digital needs of the societyPromoting the representation of all creative and cultural industries on the Internet for the needs of effective policy-making adapted to the new digital needs As for the transversal activities of project management the partnership will develop a number of working tools which can be considered as results, to list them:Partnership Agreement,Project management toolsPromotion plan and reportQuality plan and reportExploitation plan"

"Media literacy is a “catchy” term nowadays but not much of ground-work is done to support the ability for conscious consumption of media-distributed messages among adults. This was stated during recent gathering of EC body, Media Literacy Expert Group. ""Media literacy"" is defined by MLEG as umbrella expression including all technical, cognitive, social, civic and creative capacities that allow a citizen to access the media, have critical understanding and to interact with it. All these capacities enable citizens to participate in economic, social and cultural aspects of society and play active role in democratic processes. MLEG in June 2018 summarised the research carried out among EU citizens and concluded that there is a “need for strengthening efforts in increasing media literacy at all levels”. A. Hellman, Deputy Head of MLEG, after listing a few initiatives, concluded “But this is not enough” and one recommendation was to “provide educational material to educators”. Adult educators acting on behalf of learners as part of civil society need to learn how to recognise, analyse and explain to their learners key terms and ideas for understanding disinformation with media literacy principles. The project addresses both, learners and educators. It is based on reports and statistics review at national and EU levels and own partners research. It is a response to the need to integrate “critical thinking, information evaluation and media literacy as some of the top skills for the 21st century” into educational systems. This need is expressed in the publication “10 trends transforming education as we know it” by EU Political Strategy Centre “Media literacy wanted” (2017).Media literacy practitioners need to develop innovative strategies to inform citizens of issues arising from disinformation. To achieve this, the EU encourages effective cooperation among educational institutions to provide educational and training materials to schools and educators. This is expressly mentioned in the section '3.3.Fostering education and media literacy' (p.13) of the EC's 'Communication on Tackling online disinformation'.In order to answer the need, aims of IMEDIAL project are to:- extend and develop of adult educators’ media literacy skills and competences in effective teaching of those skills (especially those who work with disadvantaged learners) - to increase media literacy skills of adult learners (especially disadvantaged).The aims will be achieved through development of:- IMEDIAL workbook and cards for educators- IMEDIAL cards for learners- IMEDIAL mobile APP for both groupsand through wide dissemination of results.Target groups:- adult educators especially those that work in non-formal education settings, adult education centres, social centres, NGOs, associations and freelancers working with disadvantaged learners - learners from disadvantaged groups, including persons with low skills and with lower level qualifications, with low income, from remote areas; unemployed, women, immigrantsThe main impact on adult educators is in strengthening their media literacy skills and capacities to offer media literacy training based on innovative IMEDIAL results (workbook, cards for learners and mobile APP) dedicated especially to those that come from disadvantaged backgrounds. The main impact on low-skilled adult learners, especially those coming from disadvantaged backgrounds, is upgrading of their media literacy and digital skills which will allow them to have critical understanding of media, be able to identify fake news, manage information they receive and in effect develop trust in media. The project will also have its impact on the stakeholders, participants and participating organisations."

The project’s idea came from analysis of the situation in the area of proficiency in basic skills of adult people. The OECD's Survey of Adult Skills (2013/14) supported by the Commission's DG Education and Culture highlighted that 20% of the EU working age population had low literacy and low numeracy skills and 25% of adults lacked the skills to effectively use ICT. These numbers meant direct consequences for Europe 2020 strategy, both at overall level and for individual countries and showed the need for strengthening the skills dimension of Europe 2020. In view of this situation, the main objective of the project was to increase level of proficiency in basic skills among low educated adults from Romania, Poland, Germany, Spain and Italy through realizing the following operational goals: gathering, analysing and categorising existing OER tools and good practices supporting education of low skilled adults, developing Interactive Pool (on-line database) of tools allowing for categorisation and assessment of existing tools and addition of new tools, developing Guide to IPool providing step by step instructions of using the Pool and disseminating the outcomes in order to assure their exploitation also in other EU countries and other fields of education.The partnership consisted of 6 organisations, all providing training for adult people and in particular with experience in work with low-skilled adults. Among partners, there were: the coordinator, CDA, non-governmental and regional coverage Association providing support in the region by organising consultancy and educational activities (among others), two Polish organisations: Danmar Computers working in vocational and adult education field providing training and developing IT solutions for educational purposes, and CK Edukator, adult education provider having experience with educating target groups especially through EFS initiatives, large scale German adult education provider, VHS Cham, having a leading role in defining education for adults and being the member of the Bavarian Adult Education Association, Spanish Confederation of Education and Training Centers (CECE) having over 40 years of experience in adult education and more than 2000 education and training centres among its members and Italian association ACLI supporting citizens, especially those that are threatened with marginalization and risk of social exclusion. The main undertaken activities in the project included work on the main results, meaning that the activities included gathering, analysing and categorising existing OER tools and good practices, works on development of the Interactive Pool together with its testing and releasing the final version and developing the Guide to Interactive Pool providing step by step instructions of using the Pool. Important part of activities included quality assurance and dissemination of the outcomes in order to assure their exploitation also in other EU countries and other fields of education. The results of the project include tangible results which are the state of art report, IPool database and the Guide, as well as many dissemination materials (website, social channels, leaflets, newsletters) and working materials including plans and very important intangible results. Those are: improved basic skills and competencies of adult people, especially those adults that have low skills, better awareness and orientation of target groups in existing tools and knowledge about using these tools, better educational offer of organisations offering training to adults as well as new networks of cooperation that the partners reached thanks to the project development. The impact of the project exceeded the expectations. It can be seen in partners’ organizations, their staff and learners, low-skilled adults and adult education providers, operators in the field of adult education. The most important is that all who participated in activities or at least heard about its results, have better awareness about lifelong learning, higher knowledge about existence of various tools and opportunities to learn which help to develop own skills and gather new competences. The usage of the Interactive Pool itself helps in increasing ICT skills but using the tools that are gathered in the database allows for increasing the competencies in many areas, depending on the choice of a tool. Project was addressed to low-skilled adults and it is expected that the benefits in the form of better skills will have long-term character in their lives. However, a significant group benefiting indirectly were adult education centres, schools for adults, third age universities, associations which support enhancing basic skills. These organisations will benefit from using the IPool as additional educational tool. As the database is self-expandable (it can be expanded by users by adding new tools), it is expected that it will be used by the organisations for longer time bringing them benefits.