Beyond teaching history, science or languages, teachers guide our children… shaping the attitudes, skills, & values they will use in the world beyond the classroom (Her Majesty Queen Rania Al Abdullah)Early Childhood Education is considered an important base for life-long learning & whole person development & the most important & most vital of all stages in the proper development of a child whether is in the emotional, behavioral or cognitive domain. Early years of child life are crucial as it is of the utmost importance in the child's physical, emotional & intellectual development.In line with the current digital era, teachers are required to integrate ICT in their daily teaching &replace their traditional methods with modern tools &facilities. (ICT4EDU) proposal addresses the need in Jo-HEIs for newly graduated student teachers to be able to teach using ICT, & for improving teachers & students digital competence, especially when dealing with children with special educational needs or disabilities, ICT plays a key role to facilitate their education process. Carrying out (ICT4EDU) project trans-nationally is essential for under-setting practices, & impacting policies & curricula in school of educational sciences & the integration of ICT teacher education to meet the requirements for digitally competent youth & children. The Main objective of (ICT4EDU) project in to enhance the quality of ICT competencies of early childhood teacher’s educators in the (8) higher education institutions in Jordan, Palestine and Egypt in line with advance EU practices, thereby enhancing the quality of the education in pre-schools in Jordan, Palestine and Egypt.

Egypt’s population is growing rapidly, yet natural resources like water and land suitable for habitation and agriculture are limited while others like renewable energy sources are not yet readily accessible. Therefore, the “Sustainable Development Strategy: Egypt’s Vision 2030” was developed by the Egyptian Government to prepare for the social and economic consequences. It includes challenging goals and targets in areas like land reclamation, agriculture and food processing as well as research, technology development and higher education. These goals can only be met, if new holistic approaches are being pursued that embrace the latest technological developments and are both sustainable and interdisciplinary. Feedback from stakeholders of the quadruple helix of producers and industry, universities, policy makers and society, clearly demonstrates a need for specialists in “Sustainable Resources Management” who have a generalist background in uncertainty prediction and different fields of sciences, like ecology and environmental sciences as well as engineering, including civil, water, electric, electronic and agricultural engineering. They need to be able to plan, set up, maintain and optimise complex systems like aquaponics farms and automated ground water pump systems that are both PV driven and connected to the grid. Thus far, cross cutting study programs are plainly focused on agricultural graduates, while appropriate offers for engineers and environmental scientists are missing. This limits progress and restricts technological optimisation and long term environmental effect prediction. Therefore, this project will develop an interdisciplinary study program, offering MSc and advanced diplomas in Sustainable Resources Management. It will focus on crosscutting issues, employ the latest learning methodologies and address technical as well as social and skills, required to implement sustainable technical solution to the challenges in food production and processing.

Large areas of agricultural land in W. and N. Africa are heavily degraded, with water scarcity, low soil fertility and poor plant health, due to use of unsuitable agronomic systems and inappropriate management. In W. Africa, poor water, organic matter and nutrient retention limit food productivity, whilst in N. Africa, salinisation, wind erosion, formation of crusts and compaction threaten rainfed cropland and silvopasture. The low food productivity, poor resilience and unsustainability of current approaches have severe socioeconomic and environmental consequences. The overall goal of SustInAfrica is to empower smallholder farmers, small and medium enterprises and various government and non-governmental organisations in Ghana, Burkina Faso, Niger, Egypt and Tunisia to successfully intensify food production and deliver ecosystem services in a sustainable and resilient manner. This will be achieved through: A) comprehensive analysis of i) local/regional target ecosystems; ii) currently applied and potential landscape, soil, water and plant health management strategies and agronomic systems; iii) relevant actors across supply/value chains; iv) business models and policies; v) challenges and threats to production; B) development of technologies, including a smart platform supporting farmers in decision-making, concerning factors assessed in A); C) implementation of field trials at target sites, combining traditional knowledge, sustainable strategies and systems (agroecology, agroforestry, organic farming) and modern technologies (developed apps/platform); D) communication/dissemination/education/training to inform stakeholders/consumers and empower smallholders (especially women/youths); E) exploiting/continuing approaches/technologies for improved productivity/ecosystem services, long-term self-sufficiency beyond the project, reduced hunger/poverty and gender/wealth disparity, reduced environmental impact, long-term local food sectors growth/increased economic benefit.

According to the EU Soil Strategy, around 60 to 70% of the soils in the European Union are not healthy and suffering from severe degradation processes. The degradation processes primarily affecting the topsoils are also depleting the subsoil health reducing the ecosystem services delivery. However, subsoil knowledge is scarce in spite of the relevance it has. SUS-SOIL is a 4-year project adopting multidisciplinary approach that will develop a set of 15 Subsoil-Living Labs (LLs) to inventory, analyse and benchmark different agroecology subsoil management (ASM) and land uses and their impacts on the subsoil spatial variations and dynamics to best combine ASM practices in rural and urban areas within a global regional context. SUS-SOIL results will be the start point to increase the awareness of land managers and public authorities to understand the subsoil threats and risks, support EU agroecological transformation tackling subsoils and increasing ecosystem services delivery, promote water security and climate change mitigation of rural and urban ecosystems. The main outcomes include: (1) develop a subsoil/soil monitoring database (S-DB) able to be interoperable with the LUCAS and ESDAC databases, (ii) the analysis long-term ASM land use and management of 3 relevant types of soil per LL and the relationship with rural and urban ecosystem services delivery including modelling, (iii) develop a set of farm idiotypes per LL mixing the ASM best practices as an alternative to conventional systems to enhance the ecosystem services provision at regional level for citizens through (iv) a Subsoil Decision Support Tool (S-DST) considering soil degradation and relevant business models and propose a (v) subsoil policy strategy framework to foster ASM best practices.