"<< Objectives >>The DIAL project aims to address the issue of social polarisation through improving European adults' dialogue competences and sense of engagement, and adult educators' competences in promoting dialogue. It promotes dialogue as a basic life skill with the vision ""dialogue for all"", as dialogue and related skills are not equally accessible to everyone.<< Implementation >>The DIAL project implements the following activities:- design of a research-based model to introduce dialogue and its adaptation in everyday life in 6 languages- design and testing a training model and pilot training courses for adult educators and other who promote dialogue- low-threshold dialogue activites among learners to engage them and help them acquire new skills- mutual learning activities for trainers, other stakeholders and partners<< Results >>The project aims for the following outcomes:- An increasing number of Europeans have the skills and opportunities to engage in dialogue, and have a greater sense of engagement- Trainers, coordinators and other individuals working in educational institutions have the tools and an increased ability to engage people in dialogue in a variety of settings.- Dialogue skills are better understood as a basic life skill, especially as comes to adult learners"

<< Background >>The tourism sector has a significant and increasing role in the EU economic performance. Along with its strengthening, some new directions appeared recently. In parallel with the growing role of short domestic travels, offbeat destinations became more important against mass tourism ones. The highlighted tendencies raise the need of new approaches. The first one of these is the community-based ecotourism.In the existing agendas, regional tourism is mostly connected to individual attractions, while the growing need on community-based tourism has less attention. Even if it is a core element of local population retention and welfare, the complex development of the community through tourism – over some valuable initiatives - is out of the tourism development initiatives. Community-based ecotourism should emphasize the development of local communities and allow for residents to have substantial control over, and involvement in, its development and management, and a major proportion of the benefits should remain within the community. Community-based ecotourism should foster sustainable use and collective responsibility, but it also should embrace individual initiatives within the community. Additionally, it is essential that approaches to community-based ecotourism projects are a part of a larger community development strategy and carefully planned with community members. The second one is the role of the new regional destinations.Among the wide range of tourism destinations, offbeat ones – mostly in hidden rural areas – have increasing role in European countries (European Agenda for Tourism 2050). Their growing importance directly relates to the breakthrough of regional tourism against long distance one. The offbeat destinations give the opportunity of different tourism types, like agrotourism, ecotourism, geotourism, rural tourism, responsible tourism as well as special interest tourism. All of them are good ground for helping local communities and the environment, while supporting climate neutral tourism.Even though regional community-based tourism (with offbeat destinations) is indicated in EU and territorial strategies as an efficient driver of tourism industry, its development following a greener and more digital approach is not a standard component of the related agendas. Additionally, while circular economy has central focus in local economic development, the circular tourism approach is rarely used. Finally, regional tourism is mostly run by family or micro businesses on the hosts’ and suppliers’ side. They are well experienced in their traditional tourism business, however, need further skills and competences on the acceleration of their services through the approach of community-based circular tourism.As of the preliminary territorial analysis made during preparation phase of the project, tourism hosts, operators, and suppliers (as learners) as well as their supporting organizations (as educators) have no competences and skills to adapt circular tourism principle to address community-based development. The combination of missing competences is currently not part of the adult education curricula and need the integration of new learning elements and methodologies. The partnership decided to join its forces to offer a a valuable solution to increase competences of tourism staff to successfully face these challanges.<< Objectives >>Following the given needs, RE-CONNECT has identified a clear need to accelerate the competence and skill development of community-based tourism in offbeat destinations by implementing a greener and more digital development approach to assure more sustainable tourism along circular tourism approach. The solution offered by RE-CONNECT is to address the given needs and challenges by developing and implementing a toolkit on competence and behaviour development on circular tourism for local communities. Especially tourism labour force at operators, local SMEs, NGOs, suppliers, and local government, as well as tourists are planned to be involved. •Being in line with the priorities of environmental sustainability and climate goals as well as digital transformations, the project aims to increase the competences of local tourism communities on greener and more digital tourism products and services by:•Developing a viable interregional digital ecosystem of local tourism communities along circular tourism.•Increasing the readiness and competences of tourism labour force on climate neutral tourism at offbeat destinations.•Developing a knowledge base to accelerate to co-create new innovative products and services<< Implementation >>RE-CONNECT partnership is going to implement the following activities:1. Development of a circular tourism collaborative HUB - a platform for climate neutral tourism solutions, cooperation and knowledge sharing. The HUB is dedicated to local tourism staff (hosts, suppliers, operators) to share their experience, challenges and best working practices within a common network. The interactive hub will provide an online environment where tourism and tourism development staff could meet, seek guidance, exchange knowledge and share ideas, concerns and valuable information related to circular tourism development. The online hub will form an integral part of the much-needed online basis for a strong and supportive regional tourism community and network.2. Competence development for greener and more digital tourism. As one of the core project result, by adapting the elements of the existing training programmes of the project partners, a circular tourism training curriculum of offbeat destinations will be developed and tested. From the content related perspective, the training development and implementation will focus on the following topics: Sustainable tourism offers, Selection, planning and booking through a sustainable process, Green transport, Sustainable stay and services (green & safe accommodation, local consumption, waste sorting), Circular tourism development opportunities (stressing on digital solutions). 3. Co-creation pack development on circular tourism. A knowledge pack (guidebook) will be developed on how to accelerate circular tourism projects, products or services through co-creation. All stages of co-creation will be covered with the final goal to offer better tourism services in the involved areas. The co-creation pack will be also tested (through the collaborative hub) and 3 interregional product/service development projects will be qualified.4. Over the main project results, a set of trainings, as well collaborative, learning by doing competnece development activities will be implemented, with extensive involvment of all stakeholders of the tourism ecosystem of offbeat destination.<< Results >>The main result of the project will be 1) dissemination of climate neutral tourism in offbeat destinations; 2) acceleration of the economic potential of rural areas; 3) spreading of green and digital solutions in less favoured areas; 4) significant competence development of the target group.The expected main results are:•Set of digital tools (hub, training curriculum, co-creation pack) on climate neutral tourism products and services•Developed interregional network along circular tourism•3 interregional co-creation-based competence development projects implemented on a learning by doing base and certified with the quality certificate•Learning interactions through staff exchange (within bootcamps for at least 5 participants form each partner regions)•200+ regional tourism hosts, suppliers, service providers trained from 10 countriesBesides this, some more results are created: - In all participating countries the development and the implementation will be carried out to test all PRs outputs. - Each partner will organize one multiplier event. The goal is to promote the developed competence and skill development tools to different target groups, the project's outputs and results achieved as well as importance of promoting and boosting circular tourism at offbeat destinations. - The results under dissemination activity are: dissemination plan, visualization and promotion materials, project website, social media pages and 4 e-newsletters. Additionally, RE-CONNECT partnership will attend to 6 external events/fairs to promote project results.

We are experiencing the greatest humanitarian and migratory crisis in Europe, following the Second World War, according to the United Nations High Commissioner. The persistence of political conflicts, regional instability and the violation of human rights are the reasons why a large number of people seek protection in the European Union. The eradication of this situation is becoming the greatest challenge of the EU member states. This situation is generating an increase of rejection to the migration, generations of hatred, islamophobia and violence actions. As a consequence, part of our youth have a partial and negative view of this reality and have not will to facilitate the integration of newcomers, and specifically of muslim population. Facing this situation, this project seeks to generate a more positive and tolerant attitude and social integration of migrants and refugees by working with sensitizing actions towards youth, that can act as catalyst and generate integrational messages and attitudes and fight against racist and xenophobic views in the 5 european and Arab countries. The project participants will be: 22 youth workers from the 5 partner organisations (5 countries); 100 young participants from the 5 partner countries that will take part in the Out of the Box laboratories (to fight against prejudices, racism, xenophobia and Islamophobia); 200 diverse social actors (public administration, university, social sector) committed within social inclusion and migratory processes, also interested in identifying mechanisms to promote a more tolerant and inclusive Europe. The project will develop: a transnational meeting to define the strategy within partner entities; a training activity with youth workers from partner countries in order to get trained in innovative tools focused on social awareness towards an inclusive Europe; in order to apply afterwards the learned tools in their countries from training laboratories with youth population; 2 transnational meetings to identify and share good practices in social inclusion; and the development of 5 dissemination events within key social actors in each partner country. There will also be developed intellectual products in order to share openly the generated knowledge throw diverse dissemination actions, and the messages and content against No Hate Speech generated in the framework of this project will be shared and disseminated on the partner countries. Out of the Box, with a view “from out of the box”, without prejudices that can condition our view, will approach good practices of social inclusion in Europe, making use of innovative tools and methods that will encourage a collective construction of a more tolerant and inclusive Europe, from social awareness and fight against racism and xenophobia. It will seek for an attitude change towards newcomers in Europe. The project will produce replicable innovator products: a training methodology for youth and a method to develop a participative political and social advocacy actions, that will be offered openly to other potential users.

The Future Skills for Volunteering (FutVol) project set out to address future skills challenges in the field of volunteering in Europe. It responded to two European policy challenges for which European voluntary and other third sector organisations are not fully prepared: 1. The European Commission’s recommendation on the validation of non-formal and informal learning (2012/C 398/01), which acknowledges the role of civil society actors in facilitating processes for the validation of non-formal and informal learning; and 2. The EYV Alliance's policy recommendations following the European year of Volunteering in 2011: creating an enabling environment, enhancing quality, recognition of volunteering, and acknowledging its value. It also addressed the widely acknowledged issue of growing professionalisation in the field. Bringing together educational institutions, third-sector organisations and other actors from 10 countries (BG, FI, HU, IT, LV, PO, PT, RO, TK and UK), the FutVol project designed and testing a new skills concept aimed for volunteers as adult learners. The concept combined a set of defined future volunteering skills, peer learning and foresight activities.The entire concept, named Your Future, your Volunteers comprised the following activities and products: - a future skills in volunteering skills concept that is aligned with the European Key Competences for Lifelong Learning with validation processes and tools. Partners researched and identified 14 future skills in volunteering considered relevant all over Europe. They were included in the model with criteria, a STAR grid system for assessment and templates for open badges and skills certificates - a design thinking -based peer learning model to help volunteers realise their strengths and discuss the acquisition of future skills - a foresight tool for volunteers and civil society organisations to collect and analyse their stakeholders' ideas of possible futures and other weak signals and to plan for action - a publication combining our results, grassroots observations by volunteers and expert insight on change in volunteering and related skills needs- testing the model with a total of over 100 volunteers in 10 countries, and at the end testing the open badges with them The FutVol project achieved the following results: - Adult learners (volunteers) have become aware of their future skills and more capable of acquiring skills that they can use in many contexts such as work or formal education and to some extent learn about how their volunteering relates to European citizenship; - Partners and stakeholders have a clearer understanding of future skills needs in volunteering and documentation tools for their validation. They have also an increased capacity for foresight. This helps them in volunteer supervision and strategic planning. - Volunteer managers, volunteers and other third-sector actors have access to all the tools, which can help volunteers and their organisations gain future skills and manage change in their environment. The model gives voluntary and other third sector organisations easy-to-use tools to be used for training, and the activities tested yielded new information about the future of volunteering on a grassroots level. - Various other stakeholders such as decision makers can used the concept to build on their awareness on issues affecting the voluntary sector, which will help them in developing infrastructure for volunteering in general. The FutVol project also aimed to raise discussion about the future of volunteering in Europe by engaging various stakeholders in its activities, such as testing, dissemination, webinars and multiplier events. It has managed to e.g. participate in wider discussions about future skills needs in society. For the long term, the FutVol project works towards increasing the ability of voluntary and other third sector organisations to build their volunteers’ capacities for understanding their learning needs to meet future challenges, and to provide a skills concept that is useful for learners and easy to adapt to many contexts. For this, it has a sustainability plan, which partners have begun to implement.

"Volunteering has always played an important role in many sectors of the European economy and especially in the non-profit sector, but for a very long time its contribution was not officially recognized at EU level. In 2012, the role of volunteering in the EU was highlighted in a resolution adopted by the European Parliament. The resolution stated that ""the competences and knowledge gained by volunteers should help them find jobs or be recognized as part of their training"". Although different target groups can have different motivation for volunteering, depending on their age, gender or life aspirations, as a result they all develop new competences or improve existing ones, gain work experience and boost their personal development. These are competences and experiences which could be used in a variety of different jobs, help achieve new qualifications, build a career or simply gain personal satisfaction. Unfortunately, they are often not properly validated in a way that would be recognized by public institutions, certifying bodies or potential employers. Our partnership aimed to develop a methodology for validation of different competences acquired through volunteering with an online tool.The EQF was developed to make qualifications more readable and understandable all over Europe. Different European countries are developing different NQFs and are on different levels of implementation. Finding different validation tools and comparing their structure with the NQF and also the EQF will, on the one hand, show the differences between NQFs, and on the other hand support the comparison of NQFs and gives a chance to include a new European validation tool for volunteers.Within this project, nine organizations from nine different countries have been working together. On the one hand, it was a mixture of organizations who are experts in the field of competence validation (e.g. University of Paderborn) and organizations who are dealing with social inclusion (e.g. Fundación CV Pacto Empleo Valencia). On the other hand, it was a combination of partners with varying levels of experience in European Union projects.The aim of this project was the visualization, documentation and recognition of formally, non-formally and informally acquired competences in the field of volunteering. Based on that, an online tool for the validation of volunteering was developed, which will make the management of human resources of organizations working with volunteers easier by providing them with an online and multilevel validation methodology helpful during recruitment, training and referencing. The access to validation tools for disadvantaged groups has been improved by creating a website which includes a personal and multilevel competences endorsement mechanism and information about different NQF and the validation in other countries. We supported awareness raising of public bodies and policy makers about the importance of a common validation framework for the competences acquired through volunteering in third-sectors and facilitating the recognition of volunteering competences by relevant stakeholders by engaging them in national seminars and a transnational conference.The outcomes of this project -with free access for everyone- are:- information through a structure analysis about the NQF in the partner countries and validation tools for competences,- a guideline of validation methodologies from different countries in different languages available on a website,- an online tool for validation of competences (tested, improved and ready for use) available in eight different languages, and- an eBook available for everyone containing all information from the project and additional one."