"Emotions are a main part of us. They often drag us and prevent us from carrying out our goals or hamper our relationships with those around us. Throughout our lives, we are encouraged to learn many things: technical knowledge, behavioral norms, social abilities, etc. But it remains strange to be educated in our own emotional functioning: traditionally, emotions have been something that might be repressed or just hided and the consequences are of course negative. The need to learn how to handle our emotions becomes more obvious in people who have suffered any type of mental health challenges in their lives. Normally, these episodes are accompanied by a deficit in the management of one's feelings and a loss of social skills when interacting with other people. Here arises the need for an initiative such as LIVING e-MOTIONS, a training program in emotional education specifically designed for people with mental health challenges that uses an innovative methodology: visual story-living.It is proven that putting feelings into words has therapeutic effects, indeed storytelling has revealed as a powerful recovery tool, especially for the people with mental health troubles. But LIVING e-MOTIONS goes a step further: we want you not just tell you a story but make you FEEL our own story. Story-living means putting into other’s shoes, feel what the other feels but… how to do it? We have used visual narrative, that is to say, short videos told in first person where people with mental health challenges tell us about their feelings and their recovery stories from a positive perspective. Feel, as close as possible, what a person with mental health troubles feels. LIVING e-MOTIONS is a training course on emotional education composed by eight sessions especially thought for the needs of people with mental illness. The teaching methodology is based on visual story-living, which means that the learners reflect about their own emotions and recovery experiences in front of a camera after the training period. They are the protagonist of their own story. It was planned that some of the learners told about their recovery story during live events, following the style of the TED talks but unfortunately, due to COVID-19 pandemic, it was not possible to implement this dissemination action to fight against the social stigma that still persists attached to mental illness. One of the objectives of this training course was to increase the basic competences of the people with mental health challenges, increase their wellbeing and improve their quality of life. We think that, despite the unforeseen difficulties we had to face, we managed to achived it. Their voices have been heard and we gave their emotions the place they deserve. The training course was piloted in Spain and Estonia during 2020, involving 21 adults and young adults with mental health challenges. As a result of those experiences, we created the Living e-Motions TELL IT OUT! portfolio: an inspiring collection of real stories showing that the recovery from mental illness does exist and to highlight the efforts made by the people living with it to overcome. The competences acquired or improved by the participants have been recognized with the ""Learning passport"", a reflecting document that certificates the progress made and thus helping to continue with the empowerment process. All the teaching materials, results, success stories, blogs about the training course, guidelines to certificate the competences, videos, etc. are available in the free e-learning platform LIVING e-MOTIONS WWW.LIVING-EMOTIONS.ORG, so anybody can benefit from this innovative training course. Indeed, one of the activities of the LIVING e-MOTIONS project was to transfer the initiative to other vulnerable target groups during a mentoring program in October-November 2020, as emotion regulation and mental health are something that any person in vulnerable situation must reinforce. We managed to train 12 organizations replicating the Living e-Motions course with their clients. The training methodology (visual story-living) has been conceived to improve the learning process and to empower the target group, but also as a strong visibility action to inform the general society about mental illness: what it is, how to recognize it, what ""recovery"" means, etc. The short videos available in the platform are key for a useful dissemination campaign. We want to educate the general society in mental health to promote the reintegration of this target group and, at the same time, facilitate early detection. LIVING e-MOTIONS is an accessible resource aiming to help people with mental health challenges to lead their own recovery process, support others in this journey and show their reality to the society, always from a creative, fresh, positive and didactic perspective."

The recent lockdown due to the COVID pandemic has highlighted our reliance on virtual means for staying in touch, continue learning and also working. Critically, it has also thrown into sharp definition the issues of digital exclusion and the lack of digital readiness for educators. This has been a specially challenging situation for the population who lack basic digital skills like the people with mental health challenges, cognitive disorders or/and especial learning needs, and thus, for the professionals targeting them.Distance learning massively activated during this Covid-19 crisis revealed the limited autonomy of people with disabilities, in particular with intellectual, learning and /or psychiatric disabilities, in the use of available technologies. This situation increased the inequality in the access to the training proposals and the marginalization and isolation of those groups, with heavy repercussions on their well-being and in their possibility of playing an active role in society, because also their distance to the labour market is getting increased.Statistics show that people with disabilities are more exposed than others to unemployment and social exclusion. It is proben that labour market inclusion has a positive impact on social inclusion and that by including people with disabilities, companies, individuals and society at large all win. The role of Job Coaches has become key to support the job inclusion of this vulnerable groups. Job coaches have the task of accompanying the client in job search and in the subsequent reintegration path. But during the recent lockdown educators, VET mentors and job coaches working with people with disabilities have found a lot of challenges to continue delivering career advise and job coaching to their target group due to three main issues:1. A lack of digital competences for mentoring and job coaching on-line.2. Scarcity of digital job coaching tools and methods.3. The digital gap in the access to on line services by people with disabilities.WORK@BLE project tackles these three challenges faced by people with disabilities and the VET mentors/job coaches working with this group to enable then and the professionals to recieve and deliver the job coaching services respectively, by these means: 1. Training job coachers in the use of digital job coaching tools.2. Developing an innovative digital coaching toolkit and a friendly platform tailored to the needs of the target group. (IO1)3. Developing an educative digital e-Scape Room for assessing job skills (IO2)The two outputs are tailored to the digital needs of the target groups. Professionals could undergo their job coaching on line to people with learning difficulties and limited digital skills. The latest will not only improve their employability but also will train their digital skills by using the platform and the e-Scape Room. WORK@BLE exchanges good practices and identifies innovative job coaching tools in order to digitalize them, trains jobcoaches and VET mentors working in the field of people with disabilities, and also creates a friendly job coaching platform and a digital Scape Room to assess job skills. Everything accessible for the final target group and thus enabling the coachers delivering e-coaching. In few words, WORK@BLE breaks down digital barriers and promotes the access to labour market and to autonomous active living to disadvantaged groups.

<< Objectives >>We want to find out what the differences are between relationship building in face-to-face learning and digital learning in vocational training for people with disabilities. The determinants of the relationship design in digital learning processes are to be compiled and documented and made available to all participants. The results should contribute to improving the quality of vocational training for people with disabilities in e-learning. We intend to continue to work more closely together.<< Implementation >>We will compile and document the different experiences of the partners both in face-to-face events and in virtual meetings. Based on the experiences, we will develop a summary that will be presented and discussed at a final symposium, as well as the experiences with this summary.We will disseminate the results together with regional and European organisations of which our partners are members.<< Results >>We will develop a summary that provides guidance on how to design relationships in digital learning processes. The aim is to enable teachers to build relationships more easily in online learning. We hope that the 18-month collaboration will deepen the relationships between the partners and build a network.

"The UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) calls for the right to education and access to work for all people with disabilities. This also applies to young people with cognitive impairments. Their path to vocational training and subsequent integration into the general labour market still has many barriers. This project focuses on them and contributes to general awareness, as well as to allowing participation in work-life and in society. Today, the importance of social and emotional learning (SEL) competencies has become generally accepted. The importance of these skills is also highlighted in vocational rehabilitation. However, there is no systematic approach to comprehensively assessing competency and initiating targeted support for participants. The professionals (educators, teachers, instructors, special needs teachers, therapists) involved in such training should be aware of the importance of social emotional learning competencies, and have the tools to recognise and develop them accordingly. However, a lack of such tools means that, to date, the corresponding funding has been inconsistent. The SEC4VET Project aimed to strengthen social and emotional learning during the vocational rehabilitation process, thereby contributing to the strengthening of empowerment and inclusion. SEC4VET brought together people with learning disabilities, self-help associations, vocational rehabilitation and science. Jointly, they all developed a diagnostic and support concept so that young people with disabilities can successfully complete their education, develop their potential and experience social participation. The targeted group is young people with learning disabilities, including minor mental disabilities, who are in occupational / work preparation or vocational training. After intensive professional preparation, these young people are able to learn a profession with reduced theoretical requirements. The second target group are teachers and specialists in the areas of vocational rehabilitation and inclusive vocational training, as well as teachers and social workers in vocational schools. The project lead to a broadening of competencies for the participating pupils and trainees, as well as for the project team members, the teachers and the specialists involved in the test trials. The dissemination and sustainability strategy was initially directed at the organisations within the project partnership, rather than at education providers, companies or integration services. This was done on both a national and European level. After the development partner tests the tools (intellectual output), they are implemented within the partnering organisation. In order to promote the transfer of results externally, the integration of project partners into national and European networks was very important. Each partner carrie dout multiplier events and other dissemination activities. The project was severely affected by the corona pandemic in the last half of the project period. A transnational projectr meeting, a transnational learnng/teaching/training event, several multiplier events and the final symposium could not be carried out as planned. The train-the-trainer workshop at the Berufsbildungswerk Mosbach-Heidelberg to test and introduce the diagnostic tools was a valuable further training for all experts to ensure the sustainability of the project results in the partner institutions.The 2nd LTTA event was planned as a workcamp with the title ""We are Europe"" with participants young people with disabilities in Northern Italy and had to be cancelled shortly before in the Corona risk area. The project was highly innovative and very complex. Four intellectual outputs are included as part of the significant results of the project: 1. Diagnostic tools (standardised diagnostics with self assessments and external assessments for cognitively impaired persons). The diagnostic tool captures the various dimensions of social and emotional learning competencies. 2. Manual on the importance of social emotional learning competencies (for instructors, teachers, etc.) 3. Concept for the promotion of social emotional learning competencies. The concept includes various areas differentiated by expertise, type and content. 4. Training modules for the participating teachers and specialists The tools that are target-group specific also contribute to further development and quality assurance in various occupational and business contexts, as well as in supporting and promoting learning. This is reflected in the implementation of vocational training for young people with cognitive impairments."

"In the project ""Digital InVitation"", a total of 10 VET institutions from 8 European countries meet in total 6 times to discuss digitalisation in social work in the field of VET and to present each other with best practice models. All workshops follow the same pattern. Thus, implementation models and / or current developments are presented from all institutions. Following this, an intensive discussion with common conclusions and a so-called SWOT (Strengths-Weaknesses-Opportunities-Threats) -analysis by the participants will be given, recorded and objectifies the respective project dimension. There is a documentation for each workshop, which will also be designed according to a fixed structure. At the end of the project, all documentation and results will be made available to interested parties. For each institution participate max. 3 persons, of which one person is the so-called project coordinator. He/she should participate in all meetings, ensuring continuity in preparation,researches, working, discussion and networking. The other two persons consist of the respective technical expertise necessary for the respective workshop. The topics of the workshops have already been defined:1. Digital communication (messenger, video chat, etc.)2. Hardware and regulations3. Learning platforms, online platforms, online learning4. Gamification, apps, app rules5. Health- and generation management6. Conclusion, results, vision and, if necessary, project development for follow-upThe coordinators are responsible for carrying out the research in their own facility and their region, carefully selecting the project participants of their own institution and preparing accordingly.Goals of the project are:1. Exchange of knowledge and best practice models2. The project develops the positive use of digital tools in VET3. Legal certainty: by dealing with regulations and data protection4. The project develops knowledge management in the institutions.5. In the project the participants learn from and with each other.6. Consideration of generation management7. Internationalization and European attitude8. Quality improvement in VET9. Integration of health management and health and safetyIn addition to the planned project meetings, there will be further online meetings, in which the participating organizations will vote on important milestones and developments and thus experience directly with different media.We expect significant effects from the project for Vocational Education and the well-founded further development of digitization in VET in the social field. Institutions and organizations can develop themselves, based on the experiences of others and implement positive impulses in their structures. This makes training in social areas more attractive and involves the group of disadvantaged target groups (trainees with disabilities). The project makes an important contribution to accessibility and access to vocational training for all. The project takes up current discussions in the field of Vocational Education in social work and seeks to make a significant contribution to the empowerment of education.The workshops and project sections are documented on the basis of a given system and the best practice models are available to a broad public. All institutions are involved in local, regional, national and international networks and will report and share key results.An important effect of the project will also be the development of a common European identity. Through the cooperation and the structured exchange one gets to know the respective way of working and view of the others. This inevitably leads to discussion about attitudes, values ​​and basic assumptions, which promotes and supports the development of a common European perspective. When planning and finding a partner, it was important to map Europe geographically and to bring the strengths and resources of the different vocational training systems and prerequisites into the project.The project can serve as a basis for developing more intensive cooperation and the results should be available in a variety of ways to interested institutions across Europe."