"From 2016 to 2018, four schools - Germany, Sweden, Portugal and Finland - jointly carried out an Erasmus+ project with the theme ""Comparative studies for individual support and digital competence"". The cooperation between the schools proved to be very good, successful and pleasant. At the last meeting of the coordinating teachers, the participants decided to plan a new joint project on sustainability. In view of the climate change that can now be increasingly observed, everyone felt that this topic was urgent and cross-national. In the meantime, the Finnish school has joined another Erasmus+ project group. The three other schools decided to take a fourth school on board again. The Italian school, which had already taken part in many Erasmus+ projects, showed interest in the topic and joined the project group. This is considered an enrichment by all.So the four European schools have set themselves the goal of collectively addressing the issue of education for sustainability as a crosscurricular topic. Our main objectives are to make our students aware of their environment and the climate change. Teachers and everybody working at school have to take social and environmental responsibility. We want our students to become aware of environmental issues. We also want to raise the awareness their parents and the local communitiy about the importance to take care of our planet earth. It's our duty to encourage the young people to behave responsible and be proactive with nature. Not only our students but all people belonging to our school environment should understand how important the planned activities are. Other goals are the development of personal competences among the pupils and the continuation of the goal of the last project. This was the expansion of digital competences. Another key objective is to meet young people from other European countries. Through these encounters, the European idea, the importance of the European Union and friendship are spread across national borders.At every school Erasmus+groups will be established. In these groups there will be about 18 - 20 students per school. They will meet regularly with Erasmus+ teachers to discuss sustainability, identify regional environmental issues, plan activities and take part in mobilities to exchange ideas. The confrontation with our project title sustainability is to be worked on by all those involved in school life and by extracurricular groups as an superordinate topic. This is the only way to achieve long-term results. During the project phase and beyond, the topic of sustainability is dealt with in various subjects. The teachers of natural sciences, social sciences, nutrition, technology, computer science and English are particularly in demand. Theoretical and practical approaches are initiated in the lessons. The following methods and approaches are mentioned here as examples of our project work: Interwiews, discussions, experiments, evaluation of results, graphical representations, use of digital tools, presentation techniques, communication in the foreign language English. As an overall result we see the reduction of the ecological footprint of our schools. In concrete terms, this means that after taking inventory of school and regional problem areas we want to reduce or eliminate the problem. Here the activities reuse, reduce and reecyling are of particular importance. At the transnational meetings, activities are implemented that are exemplary for dealing with environmental problems. For example at the meeting in Portugal: collecting garbage on the beach, separating the garbage, recognising recyclable raw materials, putting up signs with tips on how to avoid garbage on the beach, summarize the activities, record results and process them so that they can be presented to others.As a joint result, we want to create a digital and a handmade handbook on sustainability in order to present our work to other schools and motivate them to imitate it. We hope that this will have a positive impact on our students in terms of increased environmental awareness and responsibility for this planet. Other impacts will be that students will be able to develop and implement personal competences such as self-confidence, responsibility, endurance, communication skills and digital competences in relation to lifelong learning. There will be several long-term benefits from the Erasmus+ project:- The development of a spiral curriculum on sustainability that will assign themes and activities to different subjects and grades.- The further cooperation with environmental groups and thus the deeper anchoring of the school in the community. - The awareness of pupils that it is a transnational issue and therefore the exchange between nations is necessary.- The solidarity with the participating countries and thus the further consideration of their problems and solutions.- Feeling the European idea and the importance of the European Union."

"Our project is a 3-year programme of research and development undertaken by partnership of 5 institutions integrating educational, youth, sports and other leisure activities in Denmark, Portugal.,Ireland, Lithuania and Norway. It addresses the exclusion of young people from social, educational, cultural and economic opportunities associated with full citizenship a serious issue across Europe. Current research indicates: a) the particular importance of this issue for younger people characterized as ""NEETS"" - Not in Employment, Education or Training, and those at risk of becoming NEETs through Early School Leaving (ESL) and more general disengagement from mainstream education and wider, socially inclusive networks. b) that within the broad range of life-skills needed to exercise full citizenship, the development of social skills, self-confidence and positive self-esteem is very important for young people c) sporting activities, non-formal types of education, and community activity such as drama, dance, music and multi-media workshops can be very effective in engaging or re-engaging young people in wider social and educational networks, raising self-confidence and self-esteem, developing social skills and team-working and thus combating social and economic exclusion d) Effective initiatives have been “spear-headed” and supported by prestigious sporting and other organizations such as those our partners have worked with, e.g. those associated with two premiership football teams, Benfica in Portugal and “Arsenal in the Community” in the UK. In relation to these issues , we aim to explore and disseminate best practice in educational organisations, youth services, sports and other recreational associations working together to combat the social exclusion of young men and women. The immediate target groups for our findings and products are youth and community workers, school leaders and teachers, trainers, and coaches, working with young people in varying degrees of co-operation with related agencies and with varying and often inadequate resources for training and support. Our ultimate beneficiaries are the many hundreds and thousands of young people whose life-chances will benefit during and after the lifetime of the project.from our target groups’ enhanced knowledge and competence Preliminary needs analysis with our immediate target groups shows a crucial need for more specific training and support directed particularly towards developing and sharing best practice for more effective inter-agency collaboration Currently, even those initiatives which seem most successful have often been developed on a largely ad hoc and “top-down” basis which has not encompassed a wide range of related practitioners and professionals from other agencies who typically have limited opportunities to share their experience and make more effective, collaborative intervention. We aim to help meet these needs by bringing together partners with considerable, but differing types and levels of inter-agency working to combat youth disengagement. We identify and explore best practice in our different national and socio-economic contexts in order to develop and disseminate a range of innovative training and support materials and resources to meet the needs of our target groups. Specifically, we aim to produce detailed reports and filmed analysis of “best practice” case-studies in 5 partner countries. These will be major outputs in their own right but will also form the basis for renewable resource packs and a sustainable, self-financing training course + associated handbook adaptable for distance or residential learning in all European countries and regions. All of our findings, conclusions, analyses, reports, films and resource packs will be disseminated through a freely accessible public website sustainable after the project’s lifetime; through publications and presentations in the academic and professional literature; and through a European conference for practitioners delivered at the end of the project. We believe that the most effective exploration and dissemination of “What works, where, and why” in this field, producing a core of best practice transferable to all European countries, must be based upon transnational analysis of practitioners’ experience of similar problems and strategies in a variety of different European settings. Our partners are from contrasting regions of 5 different countries from North, West, South and Eastern Europe. Each one has a variety of local and regional networks of related agencies in education, youth and community work, sport and leisure. Their staff are drawn from both educational and youth work backgrounds and all have specific and varied experience of working with different types of disadvantaged learners from marginalized communities in different European contexts, many with a migrant background."

"Our project is a 3-year programme of research and development in STEAM education and training. (STEAM is the acronym for Science, Technology, Art and Design, and Mathematics) We have called our project STEAMing - short for ""STEAM: INternational Guidance to best practice ."" We undertake this R+D programme as a partnership of 5 institutions providing primary and secondary education in 5 different countries: Ireland, Croatia, Norway, Portugal, and Greece. Increasing knowledge and competence in STEAM subjects in order to foster essential innovation and creativity features as a key priority in European and National policy statements for the year 2020 and beyond. Our project addresses this need through an identification and analysis of what appears to be best practice in STEAM education at primary and secondary school level in 5 different countries with a contrasting range of socio-economic, demographic, and educational circumstances. The children and families served by our 5 partner organisation and their associates have a corresponding diversity of social, economic and educational needs and experiences. We address the particular needs of children from migrant and itinerant communities; children with special educational needs; and ethnic and linguistic minorities. We also address the uneven but still widespread persistence of the relative disengagement and under-achievement of girls in STEAM subjects. Within this context, our trans-European investigation aims to explore the crucial questions of ""what works, where, why, and for whom"" in STEAM education Our findings and conclusions will be used to produce an innovative range of practical products and resources for the training and support of all members of our target groups in any European country - teachers, school leaders, educational advisors, administrators, and policy-makers. Through the wider dissemination and exploitation of our outputs to and by our target groups we hope to facilitate an enhancement of STEAM teaching and learning that will ultimately make a significant positive impact on the educational engagement and attainment of their pupils and students - the ultimate beneficiaries of our project across the European area. Our research and development programme will feed into the development and delivery of the project's major products. These will include: (a) Initial and updated ""State of the Art"" reports from each partner on key issues of implementing and innovating STEAM education in their own countries, regions and institutions; (b) A synoptic overview of these reports relating them to general European policy debates and initiatives;(c) One or more detailed case-studies and analyses by each partner of what appears to be demonstrably best practice in STEAM education in their own institutions and local educational networks;(d) Films and other presentations made by the partners to illustrate the findings and conclusions from their case-studies and demonstrate ""best practice"" in operation. (e) a substantial handbook of STEAM education and innovation to accompany our training courses (see below) or as a stand-alone productAll of these outputs, together with key materials and resources from other sources, will be made available and freely downloadable through a publicly accessible STEAMing website. This will operate as an interactive, online resource pack updated as the project progresses and sustainable after its lifetime.In addition to establishing and maintaining this STEAMing website, our strategy for the wider dissemination and exploitation of our outputs encompasses the development of a 5-day residential training course for members of our target groups in all European areas. During the project's lifetime, we will deliver 2 pilot versions of this residential course, funded by delegates' fees which themselves are eligible for ERASMUS+ KA1 funding. The course will be accompanied by an 80 or 90 page course handbook presenting our findings, reports and conclusions. The course and handbook will be freely downloadable from the public website for members of our target groups to use as a residential or online blended CPD programme for the training and support of teachers and associated professionals in their own and other institutions. For these and other purposes related to our dissemination strategy, we will also deliver one 5-day residential training course in STEAM education and innovation at each of our partner institutions during the project's lifetime. These will be offered to members of our partner institutions' own staff. Course fees, travel costs and subsistence will be met from within the project's budget as Learning, Teaching and Training Activities designed to embed STEAM education and innovations within their institutions' mainstream cultures and structure."