The VOLUME project is addressing volunteers who care about unaccompanied minors as a primary target group. The overall objective is to provide them with key competences that are needed to care about unaccompanied minors in an appropriate way. To reach this objective, the project will develop a training platform with training modules for volunteers, covering relevant topics like i.e. reception and housing, education and training, health and wellbeing, family reunification and legal framework. The training platform might as well be used by professionals seeking non-formal training opportunities in this field of activity. The final content and structure of the training modules and the curriculum will be basing on the outcomes of a need analysis conducted in the project prior to the content development. The modular structure of the training platform will enable learners and educators to individually choose from topics relevant to their respective activities. Learners will be able to assess and validate their learning outcomes with open digital badges. Moreover, apart from delivering self-directed non-formal learning opportunities for the primary target groups, the project is as well addressing educators who are implementing training courses for volunteers (and professionals seeking for non-formal training) seeking for appropriate training material that can be combined with face-to-face seminars and on-line workshops. To meet their demands, the project is going to develop and disseminate a blended learning curriculum that can be combined with the VOLUME training modules. The number of unaccompanied minors seeking asylum in the EU increased dramatically reaching a total of 100.000 minors in 2015. With a high number of unaccompanied minors waiting in entry states like Greece for being distributed to other EU countries, or entering the EU in the upcoming periods due to many unsolved conflicts throughout the world, the issue will be remaining on the agenda of both political and societal level in Europe and its member states. In most EU countries receiving refugees and migrants, volunteers play a significant role in the support of unaccompanied minors. They act as legal guardians, accompany minors in their school education or initial vocatineeded onal training, host minors in their homes or look after their health and safety. Volunteers often form a specific role in the lives of unaccompanied minors who are mostly missing relatives, belonging to the few adults that are able to find an individual personal access to them. Within this special role there are numerous i.e. social, psychological, or educational skills to be me the volunteers. Other than professional staff they are not entitled for further training in most cases, so that they have to look for educational opportunities themselves. This clearly expresses the demand for individual training opportunities for volunteers supporting unaccompanied minors. There is a demand as well for for professionals working in related areas, seeking for non-formal training opportunities that can be combined with their daily work obligations. According to European studies, a common challenge reported in the fields of caring about unaccompanied minors is the lack of specialised and trained staff. Target groups of the project include volunteers caring about unaccompanied minors, volunteer coordinators, professionals in this field of activity seeking for non-formal training, and staff and decision makers in adult education and other educational and social sectors. The medium to long-term impact of the project on teaching staff will be to strengthen their methodological skills and abilities. The impact on the participating organisations will be to have better trained staff in an area of competence which is a key issue to providing educational quality at a very broad term. An impact in the participating organisations at medium to long term will be achieved by strengthening the methodological skills through the application of training platform and the blended learning curriculum. This will be due within the participating organisations where staff will be strengthened in their professional development, and externally for trainers working in other relationships with volunteers and/or professionals in the field. Participants in the project will gain a new platform for the development of individual competences as regards working with their beneficiary groups at short term, and being enabled to apply and further develop further knowledge at medium and long term. The project is bringing together partners from five European countries experienced in migration and integration issues including the care for unaccompanied minors. The VOLUME project outputs will be available on the training platform as open educational resources (OER) in all partner languages (English, German, Italian and Greek). Local multiplier events and a short-term staff training will support the dissemination.

Context and the background:The employability of migrants in the EU is one of the main concerns when we talk about the Social Inclusion and Integration of people with an immigration background. Learning a new language and understanding cultural differences are the first steps to increasing their employability. The main objective of this project was to create a platform that will provide the necessary language skills and cultural knowledge in three most easily available jobs for immigrants, which are jobs in the service sector (waitress, hotel reception, cleaning), construction sector (construction workers, plumbers and electricians) and health sector (care for elderly, nurses and child care). This project also included the Job Interview part to prepare them for their first job interviews and improve the chances of getting employed.All of these efforts were to help the EU Action Plan on Integration of third-country nationals (2016), which already pointed out that linguistic and cultural barriers in education and on the labour market contribute to the vulnerable position of the migrants and refugees. Objectives: - Support and enhance the learning of trade-specific vocabularies within the sectors of health, service and construction; - Promote digital use in education, and thus enhance individuals levels of digital skills; - Provide VET students with an innovative learning method; and - Equip the users better for the labour market through an increased linguistic, cultural, and digital knowledge level.Participants:Primary target group - unemployed migrants and refugeesSecondary target group - VET teachers and professionals, language schoolsDevelopment of materials:To ensure the relevance of the materials, some partners decided to use their own VET teachers or reach out to VET schools to help them develop the materials.There were 2 teachers from Sprogcenter Vejle, C1- Short-term Joint staff training activity:30 participants were attending this activity in total (including the partners) with relevant background in VET or language learning in general. Testing of the VR and VCC platform:VCC total number of users: 2177 usersExternal VR testers: Dissemination: Final numbers for each period and activity type (online and offline) can be found in the Annexes - Dissemintaiton Report. FB page followers: 336FB page visits: 1.329Estimated coverage rate: 27.928The estimated total amount of users: 26.123 (this rate indicates how much people clicked, shared, liked, or commented on posts on the Facebook page)The total amount of posts: 110The estimated total amount of reached people: 73.261Activities- 5 transnational partner meetings (3 physical, 2 online due to Covid-19)- 2 workshops for partners (IO1- Curriculum and IO2 - Gamification and VR)- 1 teacher training activity (2 days, first day with presentation and knowledge sharing, second day with workshop and peer discussion)- Development of the Curricular framework (IO1)- Technical Development of VCC platform and VR experiences- 5 alpha testings ( internal testing for bug-fixing (making the platform work without problems) in several intervals- 2 different UX testings for each partner (online testing for VCC and physical testing of VR experience)Results:1. Reusable Curricular Framework2. VCC material: 5 languages (Greek, Danish, German, Italian, French) 3 main modules (Health care, Construction, Service) focusing on 3 job positions 8 Lessons in each module containing relevant materials Various mini-tests, mini quizzes and final test3. 3 trade-specific VR environments for practising vocabulary and job functions within specific sectors VR: 10 levels total 3 Health levels (1. Immobile patient care, 2. Patient with Alzheimer, 3. Emergency) 3 Construction levels (1. Bricklaying, 2. Electrician, 3. Plumber) 3 Service levels (1. Receptionist, 2. Guest care, 3. Restaurant) 1 job interview VR-environment for training situation awarenessImpact: -Enhance trade-related language competencies and cultural know-how of migrants and refugees;-Enhance the digital competencies both of the students and the teachers; and -Offer a new methodology for teaching languagePotential longer-term benefits:The project develops a learning platform and a user’s handbook that will remain available 5 years after the project. The project offers a supplementary digital learning material to be used in VET schools in all the European countries after the EU funding period. An effective dissemination plan will secure that the project results will be spread to relevant educational institutions. All of which are available on the project’s website: https://www.work-vr.eu/

Building Social Bridges by Entrepreneurial Thinking: the overall aim of this project is to facilitate and pave the way for sustainable social inclusion among socially marginalized groups through improving their entrepreneurial mindset and competences. In the project we focus on increasing social capital which often goes hand in hand with the increasing of cultural and economic capital. Social capital has commonly been used as a term to characterize the networks that link people together in useful ways (bridging capital) and build reciprocity and social solidarity through shared norms and loyalties (bonding capital). Social capital is a constructive source of participation and community relations; thus it is an important resource for adult learners aiming at better accessing labour market, local communities and social groups.The main beneficiaries of the project are marginalized groups in European societies who are educationally and socially disadvantaged. According to Eurostat (2012) circa 24% of the European population risks poverty or social exclusion. Due to the expertise of the participating organizations the project partnership will concentrate on the work with migrants and refugees on one hand, and with drop-outs of the compulsory school-system as vulnerable sub group on the other hand. During the project lifetime, we expect to include 100 end beneficiaries and 20 role models as active participants directly into the project flow. Major target groups of the project outputs will be teachers and stakeholders in adult learning, and other educational and social sectors.To increase any type of capital, an entrepreneurial mindset and entrepreneurial competences are needed. What is important in the project approach is that we do not work on entrepreneurship with the objective to create small companies, businesses etc. We focus on entrepreneurial thinking as a means to increasing social capital to motivate people to create, or access and develop networks and communities to link people to the external environment beyond the confines of one´s own affinity group. They should become change makers of their life as well as in the community. The main strategy to achieve this goal is to work with role models - preferable role models who have faced challenges comparable to those the learners are facing. Role models will be people who achieved to build social bridges against all the external circumstances and obstacles. Building up an entrepreneurial mindset is including knowledge about ones’ own values and fears. For example, if one does not allow oneself to fail, to take risks, to be active in the planning ones’ own life, it will block the approach to and the motivation to learn and to improve the own situation.The project will result in 3 intellectual outputs:- A review on recent research of good practice in working on the entrepreneurial mindset and competences and of working with role models. - Portraits of role models for entrepreneurial thinking, highlighting why people have had success and have been able to increase their social capital and we will make the findings accessible to the public. These role models will come out of the beneficiary groups of the project. At the end there will be portraits and descriptions of these role models and their secrets, accessible for the public and useable for educational activities, aiming at fostering entrepreneurial thinking and beyond.- A toolkit for teachers, trainers, stakeholders and multipliers from adult learning institutions and other educational / social sectors, in which the training programme developed in the project will be published together with the training methodologies applied by the partners, and learning experiences made by training participants.We want to highlight the importance of building bridges to external environments, and how helpful communities, associations etc. are for gathering a better position and voice in local societies. We want to assess the beneficiaries’ entrepreneurial competences by different methods (i.e. portfolio work) and give them feedback. This will be done in workshops and trainings. We will improve the entrepreneurial competences and change the entrepreneurial mindset by a process of dialogue with the role models and the reflection on this experience. The partners will work on the objectives with different methods due to their strengths - creative methods, blended and online learning. Through the possibility to transfer the project outcomes to other target groups, further effects of the project may arise at long term. This concerns stakeholders (professionals from education and training institutions, social services and migrant organisations) that are incorporated in the project, and should help to ensure the sustainability of project outcomes.

"When the partners applied for the project many refugees - mainly from Syria - came to Europe, especially to Germany, Austria and Sweden. Amongst them were highly educated people, students, people with diploma etc. From an ethical, economic and social point of view it was and is important to try to integrate those people as fast as possible and to find ways to bring them into the labour market, into jobs, which match their qualifications and competences. This project tried to support refugees and migrants finding a proper track of integration. Its main focus was to support refugees and migrants to get access to higher education, especially universities. The consortium wanted to work on this overall aim by adressing important institutions of education - institutions and NGOS of adult education and universities. Adult education can help the refugees to make their path to universites easier and more effective by different means: language courses, collecting, assessing the competences of the target group and making them visible and offering guidance. In cooperation with universities and other institutions adult education can create paths to make the access to higher education easier and to support processes of validation of given competences and qualifications. The participating organisations were organisations working exactly at the interface with universities, VNB with the open university Niedersachsen, uniT with the Karl-Franzens university and the university of applied sciences in Graz, Cardet with the university of Nicosia, VIFIN with the university of Copenhagen and CESIE with the university of Palermo. The main activities of the project were the meetings of the consortium with local and regional experts to get to know and to discuss good practice examples. Each partner organized a meeting and experts from universities, NGOs, migrants`communities and adult education organisations. They gave an overview of the situation in their country and region and presented good practice examples of how to support the target group. Each partner also brought in its own expertise -VNB its experiences in qualification, guidance and competence checks, uniT its experience in qualification, guidance and competence checks by using creative methods and arts and especially its project ""Silent University"" which gives migrants and refugees the opportunity to show their competences by taking part in research and teaching projects, VIFIN and Cardet their special expertise in blended and online learning, CESIE its expertise in working with migrants and the special method of Danilo Dolci. Stakeholders on local and regional leves were involved in these activities and meetings, too - as guests or as speechers or by getting the newsletters.The activities lead to different interesting results and impacts - for the partners, cooperating organisations and the stakeholders:- It became clear that the language skills are one of the most important barriers. It takes a certain amount of time to learn a language from the scratch to a level which fulfills the demands of higher education. As the refugees often need to earn money as soon as possible they do not have the time and the ressources to invest enough energy in learning the language up to the requested level.- A lot of refugees do not really know the European systems of education. They especially are not familiar with the higher vocational education because that often does not exist in their home countries. They often do not have an instutionalized higher vocational training - one either goes to university or works as an unskilled worker learning by doing. Proper guidance can sort out useful paths for career planning of the target group by focussing on higher vocational education. These paths may much better match their competences and needs as the offers at the university. - Good designed online-tools for guidance, competence checks and language training are really important and helpful. Also to have the chance to do parts of study programmes in certificated online-courses which may be done in English too.- It is very important to open space for migrants and refugees to show their competences even if it is outside the labour market. This is the main idea of the Silent University. Their people can teach, research and communicate in different languages , adressing different topics. This is very important for the development of self-esteem, motivation and social integration. It also stops the process of dequalification.All the partners and the cooperating organisations will continue working on the above mentioned issues in their daily work with the target groups and will spread the results in their regional political and educational networks. They also will try to devleop a further European project. Integrations takes and needs time, so all relevant organisations should not stop to support this important process by their means."

The project is aiming at developing a state-of-the-art approach in the provision of common European values to adult learners and beyond. The methodology will be basing on the principles of Cultural Intelligence (CQ). Cultural intelligence is a rather new methodology that can be understood as the capability to relate and work effectively across cultures. This approach will be transferred and further developed as a practice model for European Intelligence (EQ), being easily useable and transferable to different learning environments working in the provision of common European values.In the past years the attractiveness of Europe as a common idea and model basing on shared values and principles have seemed to decrease constantly in many member countries throughout Europe. On the other hand, respect for shared European values has always underpinned EU actions in education and youth. In 2015, the European Commission and the EU Ministers for Education committed to “strengthen their actions to ensure that children and young people acquire social, civic and cultural competences and enhance their critical thinking”. In order to regain a stronger commitment of European citizens towards common European values, new and attractive measures have to be made at all societal levels including the education of youth and adults.Target groups of the project will primarily be teaching staff, stakeholders and multipliers in adult and youth education. The overall objective is to build up the target groups’ capacities in teaching European values by using the EQ methodology. Voluntary staff (i.e. in integration courses) shall be addressed as well. End beneficiaries of the project are adult and young learners, including newly arrived migrants and refugees. During the project lifetime, it is envisaged that about 375 participants will benefit directly from the project results.Main result of the project will be an electronically accessible, multilingual guide book to the European Intelligence (EQ) methodology with recommendations, teaching examples and resources, enabling teaching staff, stakeholders and other learning environments like self-directed learning circles to improve their skills and abilities in European values teaching and learning. Multiplier events will take place at regional level in order to promote the project outcomes. Additionally the project will provide the following results:- A common documented understanding of fundamental values in Europe, taking into account the different experience and conditions in the participating countries;- A joint internal communication platform, clearly documenting the individual project steps;- A project website, where project results will be presented, in order to support the dissemination of the project outcomes (multi-lingual);- Project newsletters (at least 4 during the project lifetime).The consortium is bringing together partners from different regions across Europe, combining experience in collaborating on the level of European cooperation with the broadest possible spectrum of activities in policy and practice areas related to teaching democracy, value-based learning and human rights education.