One of the most important economic sector in Europe is Crafts and small businesses, that employ more than 66% of Europe's workforce. In Europe, small enterprises and craft businesses are a prominent source of jobs and a breeding ground for business ideas. Handicrafts and Art handicraft (H&Ah) sector have a specific cultural and social value for Europe’s heritage and economy. H&Ah sector is facing huge changes due to the use of new technologies and market trend that could give new possibilities of business and job profile development. Main changes are: - increased connection to design, - new tools of promotion & selling (e-commerce& media) – availability of new technologies (for ex. 3D-Printing). A new e-commerce sector is increasing as Internet companies like Etsy (over 20 million users, including more than 800,000 stores with a total sales turnover of more than $ 700 million until the end of 2012) are helping to promote a renaissance in handicrafts in Europe and around the world. The firms provide platforms that enable individual artisans to sell their products on the web in a growing market niche. The business is booming, additionally there is also a new cultural trend of sharing on the web through blog and video knowledge and technique on handicraft. Behind this reality there is the need to share with future artisan old techniques that modern societies are losing. In the actual well known transversal economic crisis, that affects especially young people (but also adults with low ICT skills) innovative learning experiences are important to increase personal skills and self-esteem for better chance on labour market or professional career.Erasmus+ Project New Technologies for Handicrafts had the following objectives:- Offer new learning paths to the VET students in the handicrafts sector, - Support entrepreneurship and introduction of new technology in VET education and training within handicrafts sector,- Provide more effective opportunities to acquire or develop those skillsThe objectives of the project were reached by - developing the learning modules and employing the on-line learning platform to deliver those to the VET students and participants. - running the training for the VET educators of the partner organisations to deliver the training on the developed modules- by arranging spreading activities and bringing new insights on the definition of individual paths and on entrepreneurial training and self-employment as a strategy for improving the social and labour inclusion in handicrafts sector.The project was realised by the organisations from 4 countries Italy (Articity and Infolog srl), Poland (Inneo), Portugal (Epralima) and Svefi Academy (Sweden).Articity provided theoretical and practical contents to the learning modules about new and ancient handicraft’s techniques, such as 3D prints application to the artisan products. Infolog provided the on-site installation of the Moodle e-learning platform. The platform was used to deliver learning modules developed in cooperation by all the partners. Epralima, the Portuguese partner, was in charge of making a review on the Portuguese VET handicrafts sector and contributed with several parts of the learning modules. Inneo, the Polish partner, was in charge of making a review on the Polish VET handicrafts sector, producing the web site of the project, the logo and contributing to the learning module on on-line business. Svefi, the Swedish partner, was in charge of making a review on the Swedish VET handicrafts sector and make contribution of the materials to the handicrafts and business modules.The major activities realised: - development of the learning modules, - converting the learning modules into the on-line learning platform, - training staff of the partner organisations to use the learning modules- multiplier events in each partner country in order to reach VET students, educators, companies in the handicrafts sectors, culture and education authorities and spread the information about free learning resources available.Over 2000 people from the target groups were reached by the project dissemination activities.Over 300 people reached by the multiplier events. 130 registered users on the learning platform going thru the courses that lead to course certificate.24 trained VET educators who acquired or improved skills in creating and running courses using Moodle platform.230 VET-students, adult learners, course participants taking part in the evaluation activities of the produced project materials.1050 people reached thru the Facebook page.100 high school and VET students taking part in the evaluation activities of the learning modules220 users reached by Google AdWords marketing the learning platform and project deliverables (Sept/Oct 2018)Over 100 companies, Vet institutions, cultural entities, high-schools, handicrafts associations, networks, chambers of commerce, authorities reached by in-person contacts reached.

"This project’s target group is young adults educators and young adults, age 18-30. It is difficult for young adults to find jobs because they often lack of experience, it is difficult to integrate into continuously changing life and work environment. According to official statistics, the highest unemployment rates were noted in Greece (20.9 percent in 2017) and Spain (16.3 percent), the unemployment rate in Portugal is 7.9 percent, Lithuania – 8.1 percent. Project “Integration of Young Adults into the Labor Market Through Cultural Heritage” will help in getting to know the most important places or traditions of other countries, provide young adults with the necessary information for integration, self-confidence, inspire and motivate them and strengthen the competences for collaboration. For example, while knowing the cultural history and traditions of other country, the project participant would easier integrate into the cultural and social context of other country, will get a job or will create a job place by himself.For this project three objects of cultural heritage are chosen: old-towns, traditional songs and dances, traditional food. The project team is going to promote the cultural values of each country, demonstrate what kind of jobs can be found or created in every area and field of the project. Every partner will ensure the promotion of each project activity to increase the awareness of the project ideas.All the activities will be included into a cognitive, entertaining, educational video, a competition ""Create virtual cultural labor market"" will be organized. International partners were chosen according to their experience in adult education, solving the unemployment issues, being experts in their fields.The project outputs and the project results, conclusions will be represented via social media, internet blog and articles."

Context: Europe needs more entrepreneurs, more innovation and more fast-growing SMEs. This is why it is necessary to stimulate the entrepreneurial mindset of young people. The important role of education and training in promoting more entrepreneurial attitudes and behaviours is now widely recognised.Web businesses are one of the primary creators of innovation and new jobs. The impact of web start-ups on economic growth and job creation will further increase as the functionalities of Internet expand. However, Europe has fewer web-start-ups than other regions, and those tend to grow less. Current VET programmes, for teachers and learners in this sector focus upon traditional business development and do not address the new digital innovation context. Objectives: The objectives of the project were to enable the enhanced deployment of ICT tools to foster the entrepreneurial mindset in VET education by VET trainers and educators and improve their competencies in order to address the key needs to: 1. Develop the skills, knowledge and capacity of VET trainers to enable them to support learners more effectively in the activities to foster entrepreneurial mindset of learners. 2. Develop a complementing VET course/programme to support the changing needs of the EU workforce/economy in particular through providing training programme for VET in order to give them all the skills to start new businesses and especially web-businesses.Description of undertaken activities:E-mprove(r) has developed complementing VET materials and courses in web-business competency framework for the VET sector organisations’ trainers and educators and their students/trainees.The project has arranged a joint training activity that was aimed at developing skills and competence of the staff to deliver e-learning training/conventional training on the topic of the project and ensure a consistent standard in the pilot activity delivery in the respective partner country.Within the E-mprove(r) project we have arranged conventional pilot courses to test, evaluate and improve the content of the courses involving VET students and teachers.The project has also arranged multiplier events, spreading activities, workshops, focus groups, personal meetings in order to spread information to other VET-related organisations and individuals about the materials, tools and courses the project has created.To plan, coordinate, monitor, implement, evaluate and follow up the above-mentioned activities the partners arranged 4 transnational partner meetings. Number and type/profile of participants:Over 2000 people from the target groups were reached by the project dissemination activities.Over 300 people reached by the multiplier events.240 registered users on the learning platform going thru the courses that lead to course certificate.24 trained VET educators who acquired or improved skills in creating and running courses using Moodle platform.240 VET-students, adult learners, course participants taking part in the evaluation activities of the produced project materials.4000 people reached thru the Facebook page, mails, Facebook, Web.Over 100 companies and their representatives, VET institutions, training entities and agencies, high-schools, associations, networks, chambers of commerce, authorities reached by in-person contacts to deliver and spread information about the project results.Results and Impact Attained:According to the conclusions of the focus-groups applied throughout the various phases of the project’s lifecycle, the project has had a significant impact on the organizations involved and the project participants. The analysis of the various phases showed that the majority of the participants representing our target groups consider the methodology to be constructive, specifically in terms of the knowledge and skills required to start an on-line business and the financial implications that self-employment and on-line/web business might bring, in addition to improving their self-esteem and motivation in (re)defining and complementing their individual VET paths. The ability to go through the material on-line, use step-by-step instructions to achieve the result, to test one’s knowledge at any point of time was also appreciated by the participants improving the participants’ learning performance. In reference to most of the partner organisations and their staff involved in VET training, the project provided new insight on entrepreneurial training, complementing VET training with on-line business opportunities and self-employment as a strategy for improving the social and labour inclusion of VET students, vulnerable people and even providing a new dimension for the employed. The partner organisations and their 24 trainers involved, have either acquired or improved their digital competence skills by producing or testing, evaluating, being trained to deliver vocational training modules and courses that incorporate the modules on web business.

Being a parent seems to be an obstacle for employment and it causes often dropouts at work, especially for mothers . At the same time to become parents forces people to acquire precious skills that are required in the job market. Being a parent is, for instance: leadership, problem solving, time management, scheduling skills, money management and much more. According to Eurostat as of July 2018, an 8,3% of active people in EU is unemployed, with Italy having a 10,9% unemployment rate, 15,2% in Spain, 6,2% in Sweden, 5,6% in Slovenia, 3,9% in Malta and 3,6% in Hungary. Among the youth (aged under 25) the rate of unemployment in EU is at 15,2%, being 32,6% in Italy, 34,1% in Spain, 5,5% in Malta, 10% in Slovenia, 15,8% in Sweden and 9,9% Hungary. Our target group is composed of: - Young parents ith difficulties to access the job market - Young parents that had to leave job and want to re-access - Youth workers working with young people in risk of social exclusion - Youth workers working in digital competences - NGO, associations and other organisations working in youth education The aim of PSAJO was to increase the employability of the young parents by providing a comprehensive training programme that will enable the recognision and development of informal skills acquired during parenting, and apply them in a future job. - Enhance the employability of young parents who saw their studying development suddenly interrupted - Increase the availability of informal skills recognition tools - Improving the digital teaching skills of trainers to enable them to deliver trainings online - Decrease the youth unemployment rate in the most affected countries The partnership is composed of 6 partners from 6 EU countries of different organisations and institutions (NGOs, SMEs, youth organisations) with vast experience in the fields of training and social integration. Each partner has coordinated one or more important task according to their experience and professional relevance when implementing PSAJO project. During the project, two main intellectual outputs have been developed: - E-learning Platform available at https://psajo.inerciadigital.com for the delivery of the training programme (O1) which provides young learners with the training programme needed to recognise and improve the managerial and useful labour market skills acquired through the parenthood, as well as with a means to communicate with the trainers and other learners and share experiences and knowledge. - Training Programme on Parenthood Skills in the Job Market (O2), the main result of PSAJO, aims to identify, recognise, and apply informally acquired parenting skills into valuable job skills. The project implemented a final pilot phase to test and fine-tune the outputs with the target group and produce high quality deliverables, ready to be used by youth organisations, educational organisations complementing their trainings and counseling activities. All deliverables are be available in English, Swedish, Spanish, Slovenian, Hungarian, Italian, Maltese.

Adult Education Organizations have long been identified as having an important role in reversing the trend of adults not being employed, not in education and not in training. In recent years employers are increasingly looking for people who have obtained not only academic qualifications but who can also demonstrate that they have a wider range of practical skills that cannot all be learned in formal education. These ‘soft skills’ cannot easily be ‘taught’ in formal education because they are learned through ‘hands-on’ practical experience and thus are much more effectively gained in non-formal environments.Adult education and lifelong learning organizations across Europe are working tirelessly to make a positive change for adults. However based upon the research and experience of the consortium; if such organizations developed their core administrative and counseling activities, they have the capacity to have a significantly higher impact. Adult education and lifelong learning organizations are managed by highly competent staff with a desire and vision to make a difference, however in many cases, have little financial, administrative and management capabilities.In order to strengthen the work of current and even new adult education or lifelong learning organizations there is a need to have concrete administrative, counseling and even management processes. In doing so such organizations will be able to reach a wider scope of beneficiaries, develop the effectiveness of their activities, and gain increased recognition and confidence from other sectors, which in turn will help to develop the recognition of non-formal education on the whole.Therefore there is a need for adult educators/teachers/mentors/peers of existing and new adult education and lifelong learning organizations to have access to a recognized iYOT mobile guidance counseling system, that is specifically relevant, offers concrete outcomes in sense of Certificate for iYoT counsellors, and is furthermore mobile and flexible to fit around an already busy schedule of many adult organization staff and members. iYOT project addressed exactly this area – to answer the need of adult educators (and participants in adult education) for common counselling digital system. Therefore, we produced the 3 main deliverables: iYOT Guidelines, iYOT Curricula and iYOT mobile application to equip the guidance counsellors with innovative and modern digital tool to support their counselling work. Not only that: the iYOT mobile app is also tailor-made for learners and users in education, counselling or mobility that now have an option to be in regular contact with educational or guidance counsellor over distance and in any time.The project involved 5 partners, from Slovenia, Austria, Sweden, Portugal and Spain. Each partner had a dedicated project team that took the lead in researching, developing, and publishing one module for Training of Mobile Guidance Counselors and 1 module for iYOT guidelines, each partner participated in devepomnent of iYOT mobile app . Each partner was intentionally selected according to their specifics and expertize so we have been combining expertize and wide scope of European framework.The aim of iYOT was increasing the capacity of adult educators and staff of adult education organizations offering different courses, trainings, lifelong learning activities and counseling services to adult participants with fast and effective access to digital counseling and information exchange. Partners developed user friendly distant guidance counseling service to follow adults interest, skills, personal and occupational developments according to available time of interested user, realized in a web-based mobile support system with innovative mobile software - iYOT. Furthermore project increased involvement of adults in guidance counseling through innovative mobile application iYOT, because with achieved (and even overachieved) results project partners prooved that the decision for implementation of iYOT project was the right one. With direct involvement of more than 7000 direct users, participants at multiplier events and informed via different media we increased their capacity to undertake new learning, mobility or working opportunities.The following iYOT objectives have been set and achieved:-Developed iYOT mobile guidance counseling service that meets the counseling, informational and lifelong learning needs of adults in education or lifelong learning -Developed iYOT Guidelines for mobile guidance consulting implementation-developed iYOT Curriculla for implementation in the classroom and e-learning online version-Developed open access e-learning platform iYOT-Trained team of Guidance Counselors for counselling over distance-over 500 mobile guidances provided during project lifetime-10 multiplier events organized in 5 countries with over 400 participants