<< Background >>Community engagement, participative processes and the strengthening of the role of communities in strategies for economic development, inclusion and social cohesion are considered increasingly important for the implementation of the SDGs in the communities. In particular, these assets are essential to: - increase the understanding and the commitment of citizens, in particular the more vulnerable, to the proposed programs, with important positive implications on social inequalities;- strengthen the competences of individuals and the resources of communities in the implementation of the programs, in a perspective of social and economic sustainability of the policies put in play.As a consequence, acquiring new innovative competences for the involvement of communities becomes a priority for the academic world and for those working on inclusion and social cohesion, in order to be able to pursue policy implementation processes that have long-term effects.The difficulty to translate these strategies into practice, in different places and contexts, might diminish it to a simple slogan, a superficial ritual, an expensive and ineffective practice. To prevent this, it is essential to develop innovative methodologies and tools based on already existing practices and know-hows to support practitioners and academic researchers, to accelerate the possibility to align practices and methods to the aim of inclusive, cohesive change and sustainability.To this aim, the development of partnerships between CSOs and universities appears to be a valuable solution, but this kind of partnership has never been developed to this day. This cross-contamination is difficult due to the different “languages” spoken by the two “interest camps”, by the dispersion and low visibility of many grassroots initiatives and by the inherent struggle of the academic world in fostering effective outreach activities. Creating network models of intervention, where knowledge, ownership and resources are distributed among the stakeholders and the beneficiaries themselves, could create systems of socio-economic inclusion that are more effective and resilient to changes and shock. These systems enable the regeneration and the valorisation of resources - be them physical, environmental, social or relational - that might be already present but undetected in the territories and in the communities involved. Furthermore, the shared ownership and responsibility over the development projects, based also on the empowerment of vulnerable and marginalised people, can foster reciprocity dynamics that are themselves a way to include and engage people and communities in the long-term, contributing to positive effects and reduced dependency.Creating partnership between Universities and Civil Society Organisations, can eventually overcome the lack of communication between the two “camps” by boosting a better organised and intentional transfer of knowledge to and from each of the stakeholders, enriching and strengthening both the theory and the practices.The project foresees the development of a partnership between Universities and Civil Society Organisations with the aim to transfer the know-how to fostering community engagement and multi-stakeholder partnerships among actors operating in several countries. University researchers and students will play a central role in these processes, as the project will allow to set up ad hoc research groups in the partner Universities, that will work with CSOs professionals to collect, analyse, model and re-elaborate data and practices in different forms (models, recommendations, toolkits).The project has the priority and purpose of working on common values in order to increase community participation and citizen engagement through reaching synergies between the academic world and the third sector. The values of sharing and European solidarity will be at the centre of the project through the activities already mentioned<< Objectives >>The project aims at improving Universities’ capacities to cooperate with CSOs systematically and continuously on community engagement as an innovative and impactful way for socio-economic inclusion of people in need. The project consortium will establish a trans-disciplinary and collaborative research group and develop international and research-based learning approaches to develop and disseminate innovative and evidence-based models of intervention and related implementation tools. The project consortium will also identify relevant professional roles that make community engagement approaches more effective and impactful, it will co-design corresponding skills and competency frameworks and develop related training (up-skilling) curricula and courses for students and CSOs professionals. Finally, the project partners will develop, through jointly-organised local policy multi-stakeholders workshops, guidelines and policy recommendations to enable environments that favour community engagement approaches.Partners strongly believe that the mission of universities nowadays should include responding to societal challenges and that this mission should be carried out by engaging systematically with local communities. Higher education contributes in various ways to making people more resilient and able to face various challenges. According to the Times Higher Education Impact Rankings which assess universities on the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) universities score highly for their Partnership approach in working towards the goals (SDG 17), for helping to improve Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions (SDG 16) and for contributing to Sustainable Cities and Communities (SDG 11). The project will be implemented by 8 partners (4 Universities and 4 CSOs) from 6 EU countries (Austria, Cyprus, Greece, Italia, Romania, Spain), with the support of a European CSOs network, 2 Universities and 2 CSOs as associated partners. The project partners will cooperate for 3 years towards the following Specific Objectives:SO1: To develop innovative and evidence-based models (and related implementing tools) for impactful community engagement interventions by setting up a trans-disciplinary and continuous collaboration between Universities and CSOs, analysing existing innovative practices on the ground all over Europe and adopting collaborative and research-based learning methodologies.SO2: To widen the academic offer of Universities by identifying specific professional roles that make community engagement approaches more effective and impactful, by generating skills and competency frameworks related to these professional roles, by developing corresponding training courses curricula and implementing a first experimental course addressed to master’s students.SO3:Fostering civic engagement through jointly-organised (Universities and CSOs)multi-stakeholder policy workshops at local levels to brainstorm with local stakeholders and citizens on how to design more effective and inclusive initiatives in their territories and to develop local policy recommendations to enable and support community engagement approaches at local, national and European levels.<< Implementation >>The project is based on a clear and simple structure in which the results build one on the other, following a step-by-step approach and where the activities are shared by partners rather than divided among them. In a logic of building a systematic and continuous cooperation, all partners contribute to all activities with their specific and key capacities. They also implement similar types of activities at the same time in all 6 countries for the following reasons:1. To enhance the quality of the result produced and ensure their application and transferability in different contexts. This is the case of activities for the validation of the results (i.e. the toolkits – PR1 – will be validated through a series of surveys/interviews that will take place in each of the 6 countries, similar approach is foreseen for the validation of PR2)2. To improve the number and diversity of stakeholders reached out to and involved. This is the case of the local workshops and production of local policy recommendations (PR3).3. To disseminate the results of the project at grassroots level, ensuring that key actors that needed to be involved in the community engagement initiatives are aware of the project and its results and able to use the tools produced by the project.4. To involve people belonging to marginalised categories in all stages of the project.Even though all partners contribute to all results, each activity/task of the project has been clearly assigned to 1 partner who is responsible for coordination and its successful implementation.The stages of the project are the following:Stage 1: The cooperation will start with the setup of a Study Group which will work throughout the entire project. Promising practices on community engagement will be collected and made available by partners (including associated ones) and will be analysed by the Study Group. This activity will bring the partnership to have a common understanding of community engagement processes by bringing together the academic expertise with the know-how based on the practices analysed.Stage 2: This common understanding on community engagement will bring the partners to a second level of cooperation where results mainly targeting CSOs (toolkits) and Universities (Curriculum/Courseware Development Framework and LTTA 1) will be produced, validated and made available to the wider public.Stage 3: In order to be more effective and have a real impact for the inclusion of people in need, the partners will run in their countries 2 workshops where they will engage with local stakeholders and policy makers with the aim to create an enabling environment for community engagement initiatives. As a result, partners will produce a series of local policy recommendations and they will work together to identify policy recommendations applicable in all EU countries. Stage 4: The partners will ensure, by organising one multiplier event in each of the 6 countries and one European event, the promotion and dissemination of the project results and they will ensure, by using the Erasmus+ platforms and their own existing web platforms that the results of the projects are available to the public.<< Results >>The first project result (PR1) entails the development of a set of 6 Toolkits, structured as interactive digital “how to do” guides based on models of different successful typologies of action for community engagement (CE) in different areas/target groups. Preliminarily, the main areas/target groups where to focus the collection of practices eventually analysed and modelled are: EU citizenship, migrants integration, environmental action, gender empowerment, economic integration of NEETS, management of common resources. The toolkits will be made available to CSOs involved, but possibly also beyond to the wider public, in order to support cooperation at the local level in planning and adapting models of interventions in other contexts to promote the inclusion of people in need through CE, multi-stakeholder and regenerative approaches. The toolkits, as well as a database of best practices, the modelling and other relevant outreach materials, will be made available to the wider public thanks to the digital e-learning platform S-nodi Education (www.edu.s-nodi.org), an already existing and fully functional digital infrastructure provided by S-nodi. S-nodi Education is a digital platform addressed to people and organizations working in the social field wishing to improve the management of resources in a sustainable and smart way. The platform is accessible by every device and it provides the space and infrastructure to set up and allow user-friendly navigation of different tools such as interactive toolkits and repositories. The related transversal outcome is the creation of synergic cooperation between CSOs involved in community engagement and universities doing analyses and modelling promising practices of community engagement.Another outcome is an increased academic offer through the design and development of new courses curricula on community engagement (PR2). Based on the analyses of practices and identification of models of interventions, key professional roles that make community engagement initiatives effective and impactful will be identified and new skills and competency frameworks will be developed for the corresponding professional roles (“Community Engagement Competence Framework”). The PR2 will consist of two methodological tools: a “Curriculum/Courseware Development Framework” will provide the methodological basis to design: (i) a module for master degree programs and (ii) a course for in-service competence development (training) of CSOs’ staff. A LTTA (Community Engagement Summer School) for 30 students will be also organised in this framework and a “Mentoring Capacity building Guide” will be produced, mainly addressing the needs of Universities’ faculty members, who will be tutoring and driving flagship projects for both the university students and the CSOs’ staff who will be joining the aforementioned courses.The third result (PR3) is the production of policy recommendations. Project and associated partners will organise 2 multi-stakeholder Policy workshops per country (Austria, Cyprus, Greece, Italy, Romania, Spain). The first workshop will aim at testing the toolkits and models of interventions and brainstorming on how to adapt the toolkits to the local context. The first workshop findings, obtained through interactive exercises, will aim to develop policy recommendations that will be structured and better defined during the second workshop addressed to the same participants. The policy recommendations gathered in the 6 countries will be translated into a set of recommendations on the synthesis of processes used in community engagement for European policy makers’ audiences. The recommendations will be presented, together with the other results, in the final multiplier event (conference) in Brussels.

"<< Background >>This project is in line with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), especially the need to address Quality Education (Goal 4), Gender Equality (5), and Reduce Inequalities (Goal 10). The focus in the specified areas, is evident at a European policy level. The European Commission in 2018, set forward a dedicated Digital Education Action Plan. The aim of Action 8 in the plan, is to promote and teach Science, Engineering, Technology and Maths subjects (STEM) to girls in attractive and engaging ways, with a view to addressing the ongoing skills gap in the STEM sectors within the EU and especially the shortfall of women & increasing STEM drop-out rates of girls. Disproportions of representation of women in STEM, as other inequalities, affect overall economic growth in many countries, in addition to difficult social issues it entails, as the Global Sustainable Development Report (2019) acknowledges, based on robust empirical evidence. Whereas 52% of the European population are women, only 30% of these are entrepreneurs and 32% economic leaders. Women make up only 28% of the workforce in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM), and men vastly outnumber women majoring in most STEM fields in college. The gender gaps are particularly high in some of the fastest-growing and highest-paid jobs of the future, like computer science and engineering. Participation at senior management and board level is even lower. Despite evidence like in the report “Women in the Digital Age” (2018) suggest that more women in digital jobs and STEM fields, would prove beneficial for enterprises and society at large, still young girls refrain from taking up an education in STEM fields, because of reasons like lack of inspiration and role models. Girls consistently demonstrate a high aptitude for both math and science, however, more than 10 years of research has shown that girls’ interest in math and science is often implicitly or explicitly discouraged – with shocking results. The percentage of girls who say they like science, drops from 66% to 48% between 4th and 12th grades. There are very few female role models in the sciences for girls, especially in popular culture and mass media: this reinforces the belief that girls can’t, or shouldn’t, succeed in math and science. Other barriers to women engaging in the tech sector, are the lack of mentoring and gender bias at the workplace and these should be reversed.<< Objectives >>Christie et al.'s (2017) study on the factors that hinder women from applying for STEM courses, show the same factors apply twenty years ago and today. The authors recommend actions that can help increase recruitment of women into STEM and assist their retention and graduation in those areas of tertiary education, which are addressed in this project. The STEM Gap is not easy to tackle, and requires sustainable strategies for long term impact. In WESTEM, the intention is to set the tone for such a path, through meaningful support and services. The following concrete objectives are envisaged:- Enable opportunities to girls and women to gain the skills and confidence to succeed in STEM.- Develop a self-assessment tool for assessing HEIs faculty readiness in promoting participation of women in STEM fields of study- Develop and apply suitable professional development and training to faculty to promote inclusive STEM education and support for women coming from marginalised backgrounds.- Attract, recruit and retain women into STEM majors and fields in colleges and universities through dedicated role model mentoring scheme.<< Implementation >>The project includes a Joint Staff Training serving as a ""Train the Trainer event"", a diverse range of multiplier activities (including workshops and conferences) as well as smaller scale activities such as research, focus groups, interviews, trainings, informing the project results and implementation. In addition to the above, the project will also implement a range of dissemination activities both online and face-to-face. The intention through the WESTEM project is to reach over four hundred (400) tertiary education students (female), who will participate in pilot and implementation phases of the designed-based research pursued. Over one hundred (100) academic faculty staff members will participate in the pilot and implementation phase and the learning activity of the project. At least 400 policy makers and teachers will be informed about the project’s scope, methodology and products through local events and seminars. Indirectly, it is anticipated that at least one thousand (1000) teachers and students will be informed about the project’s scope, methodology and products through dissemination campaigns and social media outlets and more than 1000 organisations at national and EU level, involved in school education, will be informed about the project’s scope.<< Results >>The following project results are expected:1. SELF-ASSESSMENT TOOL Develop a self-assessment tool for assessing HEIs faculty readiness in promoting participation of women in STEM fields of study2. LEARNING TOOLKIT A set of practical resources for HEIs faculty with inclusive strategies to encourage girls to study and complete STEM subjects at university and pursue STEM careers3. MENTORS- ROLE MODELS ACADEMY Development of role model mentoring programme for girls and women to encourage them to pursue STEM fields of study and occupations, using successful women examples in STEM related careers. (Could include social media campaign)"

<< Objectives >>PROMEhnance aims to contribute to the professionalisation, at EU level, of participatory and innovative local development processes. In order to achieve this, the project (SO1) collects evidence of existing and most recent developments on the topic (SO2) defines emerging competence needs and develops a reference competence framework, (SO3) designs and concept-tests a modular curriculum prototype and (SO4) offers learning opportunities and a transnational professional learning community.<< Implementation >>The project is structured in 4 WPsWP1 - ManagementWP2 - Methodological Phase - Analysis of case studies, literature review and Competence Framework developmentWP3 - Piloting and Development Phase: creating and validating a new Curricula Prototype and a body of knowledge and digital learning resourcesWP4 - Delivery phase: Delivering Joint Transnational Learning and Exchange experiences and launching a digital Multilingual Learning Community Platform, disseminating the project results.<< Results >>The project’s main results are: An analytical report on innovative practice of territorial development, a reference competence framework, including the identification and concept validation of possible learning pathways. A new Curricula Prototype, digital learning tools, transnational learning paths, guidelines and recommendations will be delivered as well as a multilingual learning community platform as a hub to organise virtual exchange learning activities across countries and institutions.

<< Objectives >>LICEAL objective is to develop the learners’ capacity, adequately supported by educators, to self-assess and undertake learning and personal development projects contributing to social inclusion and employability. Encouraging civic engagement and participation is part of the LICEAL picture, following recent policy documents to develop social and relational skills with classic employability skills. LICEAL will also produce policy recommendations for all levels of decision makers.<< Implementation >>Through participatory learning and quality development, the project will implement its activities according to the needs of the target groups. These activities will allow to explore and evaluate the challenges of the labour market and socio-economic conditions through an initial research work, including surveys and one-to-one interviews; a reality check including a piloting phase and different national and stakeholders’ workshops; a final policy-oriented phase through Policy Labs implementation.<< Results >>LICEAL will produce:-The Analytical Review of Adult Learning Practices linking Citizenship and Employability Learning Outcomes - a set of relevant adult learning practices; -The Support toolkit for Integrated (Citizenship and Employability) Learning - a tool for adult learners-Educators Guidelines & Policy Guide Box for Integrated Design of Citizenship and Employability Adult Learning Paths, - innovative strategies on learning and personal development opportunities; -Policy Recommendations.

<< Objectives >>EYES aims to encourage young people to participate as active agents in the climate change mitigation process in urban areas marginalized to promote a transition from a simple awareness of climate change to an active involvement.The specific objectives are to1.to strengthen the capacity of the partner organizations2.to increase youth knowledge and skills in the area of climate change effects in urban regions 3.to promote innovative neighbourhood practices in response to climate change<< Implementation >>Main actions are:-Training format: Methodology and Framework for Youth Engagement in Urban Marginalized Area-Training format on the job: EYES pilot test-“EYES Urban labs: testing the competence acquired and engaging young people in facing climate change ”-EYES demonstrative environmental actions-Networking and EYES Scale-up-EYES dissemination and communication actions-Project management, monitoring and quality control<< Results >>Main results are:-the development of one training format to better engage youth in marginalized urban area-3 pilot test of the training format with at least 30 youth -3 youth urban labs in each partner country co developed with at least 20 young people aged between 15-20 years for each country involved -3 small actions that contribute to environmental protection with at least 30 young people for partner country-1 Networking and scale-up strategy