CONTEXTWork-related stress is often cited as a major concern for managers in health and social welfare. The legislation of the EU [Framework Directive, on the introduction of measures to encourage improvements in the safety and health of workers] expresses the need of the systematic training and support for the new and young employees so they can perform their duties. According to European surveys on working conditions and scientific literature, particularly young professionals and workers are at risk from various forms physical and psychological hazards due to stress. As reported by the European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions, stress due to work, are among the most commonly reported causes of illness workers, affecting more than 40 million people across the EU, with a great portion of it being young workers. OBJECTIVESIn this context, BooStress developed a vocational training package to equip current and prospect young workers with stress management skills, in the context of health and safety framework, and build their capacity to address relevant challenges in their work environment. The project overall aim was to upgrade and multiply the opportunities for up-skilling and re-skilling young workers in managing work related stress, via innovative VET tools and pedagogies, accompanied by skills acquisition assessment, recognition and validation methods. More specifically, the project objectives were to: combat low levels of stress management skills among young workers through open and inclusive digital tools, resources and practices; empower young workers to become creators of their own career via soft skills acquisition and maximize their employability opportunities; enhance the development of critical media literacy skills and competences in VET; provide innovative youth and VET pedagogical methods, best practice guidelines, and strategies towards the use of digital tools and innovative learning environments; empower all stakeholders to use innovative ICT-based VET practices and resources in enhancing new skills for youth; provide contemporary methods and tools for assessment of skills acquisition, recognition and validationPARTICIPANTSThe consortium consisted of 3 partners from 3 EU countries:1. CARDET – Centre for the Advancement of Research and Development in Educational Technology (Cyprus): It is one of the leading research and development center in the Mediterranean region with global expertise in project design and implementation, capacity building, and e-learning.2. FIPL – Future in Perspective (Ireland): It is a private company working in the field of vocational training, adult education, e-learning, digital media and social inclusion.3. Caminos - Asociación Caminos (Spain): It is a Spanish non-profit association located in Andalucía, which is dedicated to the field of education through opportunities of exchange, development and social inclusion.MAIN ACTIVITIESThe BooStress project consisted of 5 main outputs, around which the main activities of the project revolved:1. Development of the health and safety Skills – youth training Ecosystem and Methodological Framework (eBook)2. BooStress Curriculum and Toolbox of Key Skills Acquisition Resources3. BooStress Multifunctional and Interactive Platform - Open educational & training e-resource and Mobile Application4. BooStress Skills Assessment, Validation and Recognition Tools5. Infusion of the BooStress Package in the labor market – Adaptation and Policy PackageRESULTS AND IMPACTThe partners secured the design, development, implementation and multiplication of the aforementioned high quality outputs. By the project completion, partners achieved to create outputs and implement activities/events for: gaining knowledge and awareness on the existing situation and of the needs of young workers in dealing with work-related stress; gaining knowledge and understanding of empowerment measures in social, economic and educational context; the improvement of knowledge, skills and competences in the field of employability and youth. In the long run, the BooStress will contribute to empowering, up-skilling and re-skilling young workers in health and safety skills; infusing the concept and potentials of health and safety processes in the EU economy and mainstreaming relevant policies and strategies; equipping youth and VET actors with contemporary resources, pedagogies, material and tools for skills acquisition assessment, validation and recognition. In addition, we expect BooStress to contribute to placing health and safety skills at the heart of the EU labour market; addressing health and safety skills at EU Level offering advanced tools for relevant skills upgrade and accreditations for young workers; and empowering stakeholders to use innovative ICT-based educational practices in enhancing people’s entrepreneurial, collaboration, problem solving, creativity and innovation skills.

"Youth unemployment remains on an upwards trajectory across Europe. However, at the same time, young people are innovating and have strong motivation to create new markets and jobs. At a critical point for Europe, The Cultural & Social Youth Entrepreneurship (CASYE) project brings together a strategic partnership of four organisations from the UK, Belgium, Italy and Spain to address a number of sectorial and horizontal priorities for Erasmus.CASYE aims to develop innovative, CPD accredited tools to support marginalised young people in becoming entrepreneurs in the social and cultural sectors through the capacity building and certification of youth workers and other professionals by giving them new approaches to support and strengthen their work, improve their skills, and increase the quality of their interventions. We also know that ""culture"" is the fourth pillar of sustainable development, but not everyone can currently access this kind of knowledge for personal fulfilment. European talents should be able to have more opportunities through activities that are socio-economically diverse and inclusive. CASYE responds to this need by supporting youth entrepreneurship in the creative sector through the development and piloting a social economy model, with an emphasis on empowering young people with fewer opportunities (social obstacles, geographical obstacles and/or economic obstacles). To this end, CASYE will create a mentoring, CPD accredited programme for youth organisations and youth workers working directly with young people with fewer opportunities and who wish to become entrepreneurs in the social or cultural sectors. Through the CASYE programme, the development of a sustainable ecosystem in supporting youth entrepreneurs in the creative European cultural and social sectors will be guaranteed.Given the powerful influence of technology and virtual media on the young, especially adolescent population, it is important to develop methodologies that are adapted to the current situations they are living. The effectiveness of youth work methodologies and tools are closely related to the ability to motivate the recipient and promote their participation in the proposed activities. CASYE aims to help youth workers reach young audiences who have hunger for social and cultural entrepreneurship through actions that are widely followed by youth, and which directly and indirectly influence them and their behaviour. Our project will empower youth workers to upgrade their current work with young people, while also validating this new knowledge through the provision of Continuous Professional Development (CPD) Certificates. CASYE will create and pilot an innovative e-toolkit to promote social entrepreneurship competences among young people . This will allow them to turn their creative ideas and solutions to current social problems into entrepreneurial projects. It is worth nothing, that CASYE itself will be run as a social entrepreneurship youth project by adopting a youth-led structured for its management and evaluation. Through the CASYE Youth Advisory Board, young entrepreneurs from all participating countries will quality control the project while also allowing the creation and selection of several potential business ideas in the sector of creative cultural industries. The young entrepreneurs who will be submitting them will be guided through the mentoring programme, using the CASYE model. This will not only lead to the piloting of the CASYE mentoring programme, but also the actual creation of new, youth-led businesses in the participating countries. We will use these examples to allow others to replicate them using the CASYE paradigm, while also sharing the learning from the CASYE results as a youth-led programme.In summary, the project will product and pilot 3 Intellectual Outputs:1. The CASYE Mentoring Model Programme for youth workers2. The CASYE Outreach Support Toolkit3. CASYE Implementation Handbook.It will hold three national open days and one international closing conference (multipliers) reaching at least 190 delegates. All multipliers will be CPD accredited. The project will be quality controlled and monitored through a Youth Scrutiny Panel, generating over 100 high quality volunteering opportunities that will be certified with YouthPass.Two CPD accredited Learning Teaching Training events have also been planned:1. Short-term joint staff training event with 12 delegates2. Blended mobility of young people with 12 delegates.It is expected that through the project's tailored communication and dissemination strategy over 20,000 individuals will be reached, while the publication of some of the IOs through the coordinator's publishing arm IARS Publications will reach 180,000 institutions from around the world."

"<< Background >>Illiteracy is an invisible problem that is present throughout Europe and in all partner countries. It is an obstacle to people's autonomy, to accessing their civic and social rights, but also to accessing qualifications, returning to work and adapting to changes in companies. Support for people suffering from illiteracy depends to a large extent on the ability of each person, in his or her own place, to be aware of the problem of illiteracy, to listen, inform and guide correctly the people concerned, who are often very far from the proposed solutions. Given the specificity of this illiterate public, the pedagogy of the WIFI project will be centred on the needs of the beneficiaries and will establish a link with the professional and/or training project. The observation of the partnership is that there is more and more demand for training illiterate adults, in fact we are confronted with applications from people that we cannot welcome directly in training courses because they are illiterate. We observe that the job market in construction and personal assistance (especially in rural areas), but also in other professions, is under pressure in all partner countries (France, Italy, Spain, Austria, Sweden). In general, illiteracy is a barrier to employability, mobility and access to training and requires adapted teaching methods. Moreover, the approach will also aim to fight against the loss of self-confidence due to illiteracy and for employment. We want to develop pedagogical content that will enable trainers to take better care of the beneficiaries and to offer them a ""bridge"" approach that will enable them to access a first job or training.The project proposes to create thematic workshops for illiterate adults. The idea is that through manual production (wood, clay, etc.) or daily life gestures (cooking, care, etc.) the target group can increase their basic skills and get out of a situation of illiteracy. The aim is for them to have a first professional experience accessible to their level and allowing them to work on their initial skills through experience and to develop them in order to access vocational training or qualifications at a later date.This will increase their chances of integration and will eventually enable them to enter a work integration enterprise, a training course leading to a qualification in construction/personal care, to start a basic training process, or even to enter the job market directly.The main objective of manual activities is not to discover trades or sectors of activity. It is a question, by this means, of approaching in a transversal way the domains and its subdomains of targeted competences. The pedagogical approach is not centred on a trade, but on the skills acquired to combat illiteracy that are essential to illiterate adults. Thematic workshops will be the common thread of the WIFI project. We plan to address several needs:1-Strengthen training systems to meet the challenges presented by literacy learning and training and the associated adult public. 2-Put learners in a working and successful situation during their learnings. 3-Enhance their ability to learn in non-academic learning settings.4-Professional development of VET teachers, trainers and mentors in training creation:Improve trainers experience and information for their trainings (Involvement in their job, new eye on their mission, & in the construction of the training. There is a need to tool the trainers to respond to the needs of the trainees.5-Reduce inequalities at all ages and throughout life and to allow everyone to get access to trainings, education and work.6-General needs-Raise awareness of the illiteracy and its management in educational institutions-Dynamization of the training-strengthening sustainable employability and entrepreneurship<< Objectives >>For the WIFI project our main aims we wish to achieve is to develop pedagogical content that will enable trainers to take better care of the beneficiaries and to offer them a ""bridge"" approach that will enable them to access a first job or training.Through the tools developed, the trainers will be able to help them to:-Acquire the right behaviours to adopt in a group and in society: to find their place in a group, to live in a group and to carry out missions on behalf of the group, for the group and not just for themselves,-Be autonomous and ""efficient"" in the investigation process, to acquire the right behaviours, the right reflexes,-Discover and acquire the different behavioural attitudes and their meaning in terms of behaviourThe workshops created in the project will allow the learners to put themselves in a working and successful situation in order to:-Contribute to the restoration of self-confidence by enhancing the skills and potential of each individual and improving daily life-Participate in the professional and social promotion of people by reducing the obstacles to professional and social integration-Initiate a process of mitigation -Enhance their potential by encouraging initiative, autonomy and collective commitment-Reactivate a desire for insertion and progressive socio-professional integration-Make access to training less dramatic in order to reconcile some trainees with the teaching and learning systems-Create social and economic links -Confront a production objective and enable them to succeed while making individual progress-Allow the expression of a choice of orientation/training and to encourage the trainee's personal project in order to help them build a coherent, pragmatic and sustainable individual pathway-Measure their motivation to carry out work for a collective interest -Help them access a professional sector in tension at a manoeuvring level -Encourage the development of written, comprehension and oral expression skills and reduce apprehension about learning the language and in contextFor the trainers it will create:-Awareness of illiteracy and the transversal skills evaluation method-Dynamization of the training-Involvement in their job, in the construction of the training with a new eye on their mission,-Taking into account the individual needs of the participants and their expectations -Developing an individualised training programme, based on the person's profile and personalised training objectives -Making people responsible for their own learning, by promoting self-assessment practices, by taking into account the pace and learning strategies of each individual, and by setting aside time for individual work -Formalising the monitoring of people's progressInnovate in adult education and training and bring forward our training centres and trainings:The project will support the uptake of innovative approaches to curriculum creation and the use of digital technologies in daily teachings and trainings. The learning process is based on the bottom-up principle what means that the learner is first participant in its learning process. The inclusion of the Innovate in vocational education and training and bring forward our Vet centres and trainings:Adapt our adult education and training programs, but also our trainees to new market labour needsWe aim at the initial and continuous professional development of teachers, trainers and mentors in their training creation and work-based settings, as well as through the development of effective field based, open and innovative education and pedagogies, as well as practical tools.<< Implementation >>We will proceed by 4 steps:A study circle ( peer learning and conception experience) will lead to a peer learning and conception experience involving at least 12 experienced persons in the illiteracy field (teacher/trainers and coordinators of each organism as well as external stakeholders, for example from associated partner or national illiteracy organisations. The partnership will create a research matrix to conduct a study circle to analyse the needs for skills evaluation and to define the objectives of the explanatory needs form the target group and the workshop methodology.It will be aimed at sharing analysis and regards on skills needed to be developed and the barriers that need to be overcome during the WIFI project outcomes. As well it will define national, transnational problematics that are faced by each partner and establish a list of suitable trainings and work placements in each country for people after the workshop.A skills map in terms of precise indicators and descriptors to evaluate someone making the illiteracy workshops on the skills map. In fact, people will first place themselves knowing only the descriptors then an external person such as a trainer will accompany the person to make a second positioning using their self-evaluation and adding his expertise. This procedure will allow to qualify progress made during the thematic workshops but also help the trainee to explanate themselves their progress.WIFI workshop. It will contain the creation of several in-situ workshop exercises taking into account the 8 EU basic key skills. Each exercise will target several skills so it will match the skills map from IO2 and lead to a coherent evaluation of acquired skills during the workshops besides giving opportunity for literacy learning in a work setting.The content of this workshop will enable trainees and participants to gain literacy, soft skills, first professional skills and to obtain the basic skills necessary for integration in a certified training or basic work. A WIFI model based on 4 workshops with manual production (wood, clay, etc.) or daily life gestures (cooking, care, etc.) containing precise curricular activities and exercises targeting illiteracy. Tutors will pilot and experiment the skills map, tool set, exercises and workshops, and guide the illiterate adults throughout their learning experience and pilot the experimental workshops.Those 4 Activities conducted by the 5 partners will produce the results necessary to respond to the needs we identified above. The detailed description of each activity and output can be found in the output section. The project action will be carried out at European level in 5 countries in different national contexts, characterised by different educational policies and needs.The project is led by Osengo, with 5 partner organisations: Euroform, Osengo, Caminos, Compass4you, Folksuniverstat. Researches for examples will be conducted in all EU countries and results published in English and each partner countries language.<< Results >>We will have 11 major results:1.National reports of the study circle containing concrete objectives, needs and definition of the developed approach2.Needs analysis in each country 3.List of trainings and workplaces suitable after the workshops4.Transnational Report on illiteracy5.Toolset model6.The skills competence map with descriptors and indicators for each skill and level7.Explanatory interview guidelines8.Model defining evaluation objectives and methods.9.4 Workshop models with exercises 10.Guidelines on using the methodology11.1 Pilot reportThe output files will be accessible to all and free.Results expected during the project (mainly for internal use by the partners) include: -Partnership contracts -Project management tools-Project schedule -Project Gantt chart -Interim and final reports to French Erasmus+ National Agency -Quality management plan -Dissemination strategy In addition, we will also expect to have the following dissemination results:-Additional stakeholders and networks to be contacted for dissemination during the project: minimum 200 per partner organisation (in their respective country and in the rest of Europe) -Trainers: 50 in each partner country, during the project-Other stakeholders in illiteracy fields and recipients of newsletters: approximatively 2000-A final event to present the achieved work of the project to at least 40 people in the illiteracy sector in each country.At the end of the project and after: -the project will continue to be disseminated and project results used and available to target groups -an additional number of members of target groups will know about the project and project results; -the national and European communities of practice (trainers, training organizations, educational institutions, decision makers) working for illiteracy will have at their disposal an innovative and effective methodology; -additional teachers, trainers and school staff members will improve their capability to use the WIFI practices and tools."

"Over the last two decades, the EC and the Council of Europe have introduced a number of policies and conventions against gender-based discrimination and violence, the most important of which is the Istanbul Convention. However, there is strong evidence of an implementation gap in many European countries (e.g. the UK is yet to ratify the Convention). These implementation issues and the reasons behind them are shared and persistent across the EU.IARS has developed a strategic partnership, bringing together 5 countries (the UK, Greece, Italy, Spain and Romania) to run ""Shanarani"", as a youth-led, transnational project that will develop, test and implement innovative practices, which will help achieve multiple Erasmus priorities:HORIZONTAL priority ""Social inclusion"":Shanarani has its origins in the indigenous people of Purépecha. It is a valid name for both girls and boys. Shanarani will help prevent and combat discrimination, stereotyping and social exclusion caused by non compliance with the accepted norms due to gender identity. Gender discrimination is a persistent issue, which according to many surveys is shared among European countries. The commonality applies both in the forms in which it manifests itself, but also in its underlying reasons. We also know that discriminatory incidents due to gender result in young people withdrawing from social and educational environments. Furthermore, it provokes psychological issues that can result to social withdrawal, reduced academic performance and cases of early school leaving with long term effects, such as social exclusion and marginalization. Therefore, it affects young peoples' social inclusion, and has a continuous effect throughout their lifetime. Shanarani will tackle this issue in the non-formal educational environment, fostering social inclusion at a later stage, while it will also have positive impact on school performance.YOUTH: Promoting quality, innovation and recognition of youth workThe Shanarani project aims to develop innovative, CPD accredited tools to combat gender stereotypes and inequalities in young people through the capacity building sand certification of youth workers and other professionals by giving them new approaches to support and strengthen their work, improve their skills in the area of gender equality, and increase the quality of their interventions. Given the powerful influence of technology and virtual media on the young, especially adolescent population, it is important to develop methodologies that are adapted to the current situations they are living. The effectiveness of youth work methodologies and tools are closely related to the ability to motivate the recipient and promote their participation in the proposed activities. Shanarani aims to help youth workers reach young audiences through actions that are widely followed by youth, and which directly and indirectly influence them and their behaviour. Through the use of online gaming, film and theatre, youth participation in preventative programmes will increase. Our project will empower youth workers to upgrade their current work with young people at risk, increasing the effectiveness of their interventions allowing young people to internalize the values in which they are intended to form, so that they learn in a way that is playful, fun and closer to their interests.YOUTH: ""Promoting engaging, connecting and empowering young people""Traditional stereotypes and overt discrimination continue to be one of the major barriers to equal opportunities for young people. Their consequences are reflected in the labor market, promotion of violent attitudes (gender violence), attribution of gender capacities and attitudes (imposition of sex-assigned roles) and political discrimination (low representation of women in the political / public sphere). Despite advances in equality, the evidence shows that girls continue to suffer from discrimination, and this encourages the feminization of poverty and social exclusion. Shanarani will put young people at its heart by empowering them to project manage and quality control the project, while also collecting their views in order to design its innovative tools for youth workers. A Youth Scrutiny Panel will be formed, while young people will be engaged in all IOs and multipliers. In this way, Shanarani will provide an innovative approach (gamification) that can bring greater quality and great results in youth and gender work to combat sexism and traditional gender roles. The youth-led design of our game, app and the Shanarani curriculum will integrate dynamics that reinforce the contents that want to be transferred to the target group. These youth-led tools will directly empower the young, while giving access to youth workers of youth insights through the youth-led evidence base that Shanarani will create. Finally, Shanarani young people will be provided with high quality volunteering opportunities through the project's social action."

"CONTEXT/BACKGROUND Erasmus+ Program has set the objective of fighting unemployment through training and education, stating that “EU businesses need to become more competitive through talent and innovation” (see Part A of the GUIDE). The project SOCS aims to address this goal by improving learning provisions tailored to the specific needs of organisations or people who have HR and organizational development tasks. SMEs (especially social enterprises), Start-Ups or young entrepreneurs are very often low budgeted and therefore do not have the financial means to develop and install tools and trainings to further develop their business and the competencies of their teams. It is usually impossible for them to hire an external counsellor to support them in their strategical plan. OBJECTIVESThus, the objective of the SOCS project is to improve empreneurial practice by improving the skills of the responsible staff, especially those in charge in small organizations by the approach of symbol work. During the two years project period, partners aim to intentify the areas of interventions most needed by the targets, by finding the existing tools most adequate for use, adapt them if needed or to develop new tools based on symbol work, especially for the final download versions or online versions of the tools for free use. RESULTS:Regarding the specific Intellectual Outputs Partners aim to focus on the different intervention areas of business counselling: IO1 - Symbol - Toolset for Strategical Organizational DevelopmentIO2 - Symbol - Toolset for Team DevelopmentIO3 - Symbol - Toolset for efficient Communication and Conflict InterventionsIO4 - Symbol - Toolset for Work Place - Quality Check and Evaluation of Staff Satisfactionand to ensure their multiplication and mainstreaming, via an effective dissemination and exploitation strategy.METHOD & INNOVATION The specific approach with symbol work will lead to empowerment of the targets, to self-activation, taking self-responsible decision for their business, build their capacities in problem identification and developing effective action plans to solve problems. Visualisation will be used as a very precious technique to create new responses instead of only dealing and being pushed by day to day business. Symbols help to express preconscious attitudes and mental barriers, even blind spots and get more clearness about future actions. 3 out of the 5 Partners learned the power of working with Symbols in two previous Erasmus+ projects ""SymfoS, Symbols for Success"" (developed for professional orientators/counsellors working with the target group of young people on their professional orientation and integration"" and SymfoS for Youth Care"" (developed for youth workers dealing with young people in youth care system to overcome their problems). Both projects proved the impact of symbol work in regard to self-activation of the users in assessing and solving their problems and the potential of making aware new resources. Therefore, the partners decided that they want to further develop the tools being effective in individual intervention measures to the field of their original activities - business counselling - as they see a huge potential in this method. PARTICIPANTSOrganisational counsellors, Consultants, Business owners, Entrepreneurs, especially young entrepreneurs, organizational and human resources managers, organizational and human resources management students, technicians for organisational development and HR decisions in organisations, start-up founders.DESCRIPTION OF ACTIVITIESThe results will be developed in a 5 steps process:Step 1: Transnational screening with at least 6 interviews per country Step 2: Draft Symbol - Toolset (Tool creation, validation with 25 targets, Training-Guidelines)Step 3: Testing of Training Version & transfer to online version (test with 125 targets)Step 4: EvaluationStep 5: Dissemination and MainstreamingIMPACT• SOCS fosters the recognition of own strengths, skills and resources and goals which needed to be set• SOCS provides low but effective threshold service compared to text-based methods• SOCS develops an entire counselling process, containing clearing, design of pathways and creation of action plans. • SOCS works as it provides a holistic systemic approach The long-term impact on the target groups will be that SOCS will improve their skills in the following ways:- help them to apply strategies for development which suit to their business- Develop their innovation management and innovation skill and help them to adopt innovation as part of their day-to-day work- drive economic growth, through innovation and adaption in their work- improve their overall economic situation, by creating new opportunities for themselves and their staff members- come up with solutions for problems as processes and change will be accelerated or shortcut- improve company culture and working climate by more efficient team development."