Demographic aging is one of the most serious challenges for Europe. The scale of this phenomenon and limitations in the access to institutional care for the elderly means that a rapid, professional and integrated on a European scale the development of informal care services is necessary. Currently, about 60% of carers of the elderly are the closest family. These carers, while providing home care, usually have their own intuition and life experience, and not proven, substantive theoretical and practical knowledge.The project HomeCare for Dependent Elderly People - Educational Path for Informal Carers - HomeCare is a response to the existing and deepening skills gap in the provision of home care for the elderly by adults from their close environment.The aim of the project is to strengthen the care skills (knowledge and skills) of adults-informal carers in home care over dependent older people and provide professional, personalized and relationship-based home care educational path for informal carers of elderly people.As part of the HomeCare project, two key results will be created:-The Training Pathway for Home Care for the Elderly for Informal Carers, which assumes a holistic approach to the issue of caring for an elderly dependent at home, i.e. provides basic knowledge and skills in caring and proactive approach to aging.-Open online course for Informal Carers of Older People at Home (MOOC), which is intended to equip adults with necessary competences (knowledge and skills) to act as carers for dependent elderly people.An adult-homecare carer will get open, universal access to a modular course that develops the care skills of older people through informal learning. Professionalizing the services of informal carers will complement and support the institutional care system for the elderly at their place of residence and in a more individualized way, which is particularly important and needed in the context of demographic forecasts.

“INSPIRE- Innovative Serious Play for Identifying your Role in a Social Entrepreneurship” (INSPIRE) project is aiming to INSPIRE and empower young people between 18-24 engage with Social Entrepreneurship, create teams and found their companies, through an innovative toolkit and a psychometric serious game.Nowadays, the importance of Social entrepreneurship for economic development is widely recognized. 2019 OESC report provides strong evidence that young people (15-24) in Europe are struggling to find work. 15% of them are unemployed while in some countries this rate peaks over 30%. “The map of social enterprises and their eco-systems in Europe” (2015) highlights the main constrains of starting and scaling up a social enterprise; lack of entrepreneurial spirit , managerial skills, lack of viable business models, difficulties in accessing markets. ESM (Europe Startup Monitor) reveals that young people try to overcome all the above challenges by forming teams (over 79% of founders started as a team).INSPIRE project proposes that the success key for a new Social entreprise is the TEAM. The formation of a team with complementary skills, competences and roles before starting as well as engagement of new members during its scale-up are essential. Thus INSPIRE project emphasizes in developing a toolkit for assessing the skills and competences as well as personality and career characteristics of young people (age 18-24) and empowering them to develop efficient teams and companies.More specifically the intellectual outputs which will be created during the project include:O1- Methodological guide of INSPIRE projectO2- Learning training guide for career development and psychometric methods. It will involve guidelines relevant to social entrepreneurship for assessing Personality characteristics and Skills and create effective teamsO3- Learning training guide for viable Social Enterprises business models addressing challenges based on SDGs (Sustainable Development Goals) and for effective use of Social Medias.It will include specific examples of innovative social enterprises with different business models as well as effective ways of using Social Medias to engage people in your TEAMO4- Innovative psychometric Serious Game. The game will ask young people (age 18-24) to find solutions in challenges addressing SDGs, and deal with everyday activities and processes in a small social enterprise. Through the game there will be done an assessment on the skills, competences and personality of the players. The scope is players to get aware of themselves and identify the role they can play in a team of a Social Enterprise. Moreover players will get better qualified on challenges of Social enterprises (workload, mission drift, finding funding, communicating the idea, engaging more people, working with colleagues etc) and SDGs.OBJECTIVES of “INSPIRE” project:-promote entrepreneurship education and social entrepreneurship among young people (age 18-24)-support young people (18-24) to identify their skills and competences, in order to develop them more or acquire new for succeeding in developing sustainable Social Enterprises-enhance acquisition of key skills and competences in Social entrepreneurship, SDGs, Self-awareness, Social Media from young people (18-24)-create an innovative digital toolkit and serious game promoting open education and innovative practices in a digital era-strengthen youth trainers, career advisors and relevant professionals skills-create an innovative and efficient toolkit that youth trainers, career advisors and relevant professionals can implement and enlarge the project’s impactTARGET GROUPS of the project:-Young men and women (age 18-24)-Youth trainers, career advisors, psychologists-Other relevant professionals like team-builders, hr managers, adult trainers, university professors, youth supporting groups, etcThe project meets a transnational need for innovation in the field of career development of young people and engagement with INSPIRing Social Entrepreneurship. The partners, Challedu (Greece), MC2020 (Spain), KESO (Greece), CiP (Cyprus), come from different backgrounds and are capable to create a holistic approach. The materials and method that will be developed through the project, will be of global interest and will have the ability to be applied in different environments.

"In the last decades we have seen a transformation of our reality, each day more and more influenced and linked to the digital world. No one doubts that we are experiencing a profound change that, supported by new technologies in a massive way, offers us great opportunities and challenges. We could say that mobile devices and the internet have been the two key elements that - as the printing appearance caused, or later other mass media, such as radio or television - reaches absolutely all the spheres of our lives: communication, information, entertainment, commerce, the provision of education, health and government services, and the production systems themselves. These elements not only provide new tools, but influence our position in the world, in our role as citizens. As the Coalition for Digital Skills and Job Coalition recently pointed out, one of the most pressing priorities that stands out at the EU level is the need to develop Digital Competencies for all, that is ""to develop the digital skills to ensure that all citizens are active in our digital society."" The project aims to contribute to the provision of competences of digital citizenship in adults, understood as “The ability to use digital technology and media in safe, responsible and effective ways”. But also to contribute to: - Increasing awareness among the adult audience on the current meaning of Citizenship and Digital Citizenship. - Empowering adult population to actively participate in the Digital Society. - Reducing the digital divide and improvement of digital inclusion levels for adults.Active participation of the target groups (adults and their trainers) in various phases and activities allowed the development of the two main products. In total, 42 professionals working in adult education, and 84 adult people participated in the design, validation and testing of the project's products, being 50 the number of participants in the national events organized by all partners.This participation was a key factor to test and adopt improvements to the final products, which include:- A training itinerary that, based on the European DIGCOMP framework, allows any interested entity or professional to design their own actions for the training of digital citizens.- A training course in Digital Competencies for Active Citizenship addressed to adults who want to improve their skills to exercise an active and effective digital citizenship. The training was designed taking into account the areas included in the DIGCOMP: Information and data literacy; Communication and collaboration; Digital content creation; Safety; and Problem solving. Likewise, the 21 competences defined by this reference framework are included.Some of the main achievements of this product are its pedagogical approach and its technical development. The approach of the DQ Skills course includes:- The use of a Moodle platform, configured to respond both in access via PC, as well as via mobile or tablet.- The generation of content in SCORM format (using Adobe Captivate) for the basic level, since it facilitates its viewing, as it is reproduced automatically, with very basic technical knowledge needs by the user.- The development of content for the intermediate and advanced levels based on assigments/challenges approach, in order to motivate the students with the highest level of knowledge.- The mainly practical approach of the content, introduced with clear link and relation to the areas of leisure, social life, business transactions, learning, employment, citizenship, and well-being. This is an essential aspect both from the point of view of the andragogic approach of the course, and with respect to the ultimate goal of training, that is, to provide digital skills for active citizenship.Finally, we outline the fact that the products are available through the project website (www.dq-skills.eu) in 5 languages ​​(English, Spanish, Greek, Romanian and Polish) which facilitates its use by users, and an easy update of content (key aspect taking into account the content topics)."

<< Objectives >>This project aims to achieve the creation of a new ped. methodology for the teaching & learning of STEM subjects in sec. schools in the EU. Our methodology will provide an integrated approach to teaching STEM subjects utilising interactive digital tools to ignite student interest & engagement. Scientific knowledge is combined with creative practices in the realisation of students-curated art exhibitions based on the STEM topics provided, while also incorporating co-creative methods of learning.<< Implementation >>WP2:Target groups will participate in Science Art Cafes with scientific & artistic experts for E-book on the use of exhibitions in STEM teaching & learning. WP3:target groups pilot test integrated STEM topics & will be trained on the use of Digital Arts Software; students will be visiting scientific museums for an immersive experience.WP4-Long intervention connects STEM/science & artistic experts with students & teachers, to interact, exchange information & knowledge on the topics at hand.<< Results >>The project is expected to have a number of results and outcomes. Firstly, the tangible results include: -WP2:Creation of Ped. E-book for student-curated exhibitions in STEM teaching and learning; -WP3:STEM Virtual Toolkit with the 3 integrated STEM topics; -WP4:Phygital Exhibitions Implementation Guide with the theoretical and practical guidance of exhibition creation. Other outcomes expected are the increase of STEM and transversal skills and knowledge of the sec. school students involved.

Our connected society is full of promises, but the online world also brings dangers related to cyberbullying, social exclusion, fraud, false information, and many other potential problems. In general, population is aware of these risks, as outlined but a recent study from European Parliament on Cybersecurity: an 86 % of Europeans feel increasingly exposed to the risk of falling victim to cybercrime. The same document states that, in some Member States, 50% of all committed crimes are cybercrimes.But not only security is a risk to consider. The misinformation and generalization of the so-called fake news are becoming a serious problem, affecting all citizens, and representing an attack on the foundations of democracy. The Eurobarometer from April 2018 confirmed that more than 85% of respondents think that the existence of fake news is a problem in their country, at least to some extent, and a similar proportion (83%) say that it is a problem for democracy in general.But are adult Europeans able to identify and protect themselves from these risks? As a reference, only a 15% of respondents in the mentioned Eurobarometer felt very confident about being able to identify fake news; and according to the EC data, 44% of Europeans aged 16-74 do not have basic digital skills.According to these figures, adult people in general lack the ability to identify these issues and, furthermore, especially young adults are overly confident on their online and social media skills which leads them to adopt practices that are risky and uncritical of the received information. If not shown and convinced to adopt safe and critical approaches they will become passive recipients of “fake news”, unable to identify valid sources and easy preys of radicalisms, extremisms, and snake oil sellers.Adult trainers can play a key role on helping this collective explore the opportunities of digital technologies by providing them the means to adopt safe and critical views of the online content. But trainers must be themselves confident and comfortable to use and apply online tools. The objective of the CRITICAL project was therefore to work with and empower trainers to help their students be prepared for the online world.This was achieved through active and collaborative learning methodologies whereby students engage in activities that promote higher order learning skills like critical analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. These learner-centered methodologies use advanced ICT tools like serious games and interactive simulations that the new technologically savvy students understand and master so that they can feel comfortable and motivated. This way, adult learners develop critical thinking, creativity, problem solving, teamwork, collaboration, leadership, communication, and others through an online digital platform that includes multiple advanced ICT tools.The project results therefore fight against digital exclusion, improve social participation and cohesion, and increase online confidence and trust. The project addresses directly the priority of open and innovative practices, by promoting active and innovative learning methodologies and by developing learning materials that support the effective use of ICTs in adult education, therefore promoting the new technologies as drivers of improvement in education policies. It also addresses the strengthening of the profile of teaching professions by supporting teachers in adopting the previously mentioned collaborative and innovative learning methodologies.O2. CRITICAL platform: a motivating learning environment where learners will be challenged to solve different problems linked to the digital security and information.The objective of the project was twofold: on the one hand, and considering the group of adult trainers, to provide them with the knowledge and resources so that they can use ICT-based active learning methodologies. On the other hand, and from the point of view of adult students, enable them to recognize, identify, act, and manage against the risks of online information (cyberbullying, fake news, post-truth, radicalism, online violence, etc.). They learn to face these threats in a responsible and critical way, which favors their security and digital well-being.The two pillars of this project (active learning methodologies and competencies for the security and digital well-being of adults), fit perfectly. From the central point of view of the use of new technologies in which both realities are supported, but also from an andragogic pedagogical approach, offering a practical learning environment. The adult student puts their digital competences into practice from the beginning of the learning process, through close activities, based on reality, and highly motivating.