"In today’s world, where the need for lifelong learning has been accepted and new technologies have taken on a significant role in increasing employability among young people, there is no other option than to reconsider the objectives of education, especially in non-formal context in the light of growing societal demands and new sociocultural trends. The current level of unemployment among young people (under 25s) is unprecedented and stood at 20.3 %, more than one out of every five young persons in the labour force was not employed, but looking and available for a job. In the euro area, the youth unemployment rate was even higher at 22.4, this statistic led EU Members to set up a programme to address youth unemployment in order to support growth and employment""Compact for Growth and Jobs"". Also Europe 2020 strategy aims to increase employment rates and educational levels and reduce poverty levels. One of the core elements to achieve the targets of these initiatives is to understand how Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) can be used to leverage impact. Young people have grown up using ICT, but for not all have used ICT for professional purposes thus they may struggle with gaining job-oriented competences, critical attitudes and creativity remain. By providing a solution to these struggles it may better the role of ICT in terms of increasing the employability of young people and help to fight social exclusion and poverty. Strategic use of the ICT could prepare young people with digital skills they need for social participation and at work nowadays and could provide additional inputs to the implementation of the relevant policies and flagship initiatives.Therefore, the project DIGI.COM/YOUTH aims to foster the provision and the assessment of digital competences by supporting personalised learning approaches, collaborative learning, and the strategic use of ICT. The project contributes to the achievement of one the four strategic objectives of the Education and Training 2020: to improve the quality and efficiency of education and training, all citizens need to be able to acquire digital competences and all levels of education and training need to be made more attractive and efficient. DIGI.COM/YOUTH intends to provide young people in transition to labour market or education, with the necessary digital assessment of competences to tackle their everyday necessities as learners in a digital world, and as professionals on the labour market. It is likely to have a positive impact on the persons directly or indirectly involved in the activities, such as: increased level of digital competence, and better understanding and recognition of skills and qualifications in Europe and beyond.This project goes onto to offer embedded assessment with instant feedback and targeted support to provide more personalised, engaging, collaborative and authentic tasks.The project focused on design of Digital Challenges directly connected within the five Areas of the framework DIGCOMP: Information, Communication, Content creation, Safety and Problem solving which are included on a Moodle platform. On this platform learners have to solve a set of digital challenges (quizzes and tasks to do, dealing with Google Form, E-Collaboration Tools, digital calender and Social Networks), and they can cooperate with each other through the forum; they can exchange messages creating different threads for each topic, and acquire the necessary knowledge to take over the challenge and start the next one. Youth workers, trainers and tutors working in the context of young disadvantaged or in in danger of social exclusion, are able to utilise a Guidebook specifically developed in parallel to both the Digital Challenges and the Moodle platform. This document serves not only as a how-to for the platform, but also provides information on the state-of-art of ICT and digital competences, information on DIGCOMP framework and other up-to-date methodologies on ICT and information on useful tools that are designed to develop digital literacy among the young people. The consortium expected to make impact with the DIGI.COM/YOUTH project in four European countries - DE, ES, PL and the UK. They addressed stakeholders in each of these countries in an array of institutions such as, universities, social and cultural organisations working with and for young disadvantaged, public administrations etc. The impact was made by developing a better system of matching between skills and the labour market needs among those young people who are in danger of social exclusion in the transition process between education and labour market. The more customized process of learning (practical tasks and embedded assessment) is matched to individual needs including those with special requests, reinforcing the development of essential soft skills such as a problem-solving and collaborative work necessary to equip persons, especially young, for the labour market."

"Cedefop's European Skills Index 2020 shows wide differences between European countries when it comes to skills matching. Indeed, according to Cedefop’s publication “Insights into Skill Shortages and Skill Mismatch” (January 2018), four out of ten employers in Europe are struggling to find people with the right skills. In a labour market heavily impacted by Industry 4.0 and SDG commitment (2 million employments will be created by the latter), and the rise of soft skills as a new area of interest in terms of qualifications, differences between skills offer and demand have widened. The context of the COVID-19 outbreak must also be noted, affecting the need of resilience as a fundamental skill; as the Commission has already stated, upskilling and reskilling programmes to protect workers from unemployment and loss of income to avoid permanent effect will be an essential tool to mitigate the effects of the crisis, with 59 million jobs at stake and those without university degrees in a higher risk (short-term job risk is highly correlated with level of education, McKinsey & Company, April 2020). Therefore, there is a crucial need for education and training systems to identify, anticipate and teach skills that are suitable for future needs, rather than to catch up with technological, demographic and environmental changes after they have happened. Vocational Education and Training (VET) is crucial to teach students, adults and workers the necessary skills and will therefore have a significant impact on the future of work.For all these reasons and with the objective of aligning the education and training provision with regional smart specialisation strategies (S3), the Stride for Stride project will work on building up the concept of Regional Skills Ecosystems. Six regions (Catalonia, Basque Country, Tuscany, Brittany, Varaždin, and Vestland) in five European countries (including high achievers, such as Croatia, mid-achievers, such as Norway, and low-achievers such as Spain, Italy and France when it comes to skills matching according to the European Skills Index 2020) will improve their capacity to identify skills needs and adapt their training provision accordingly. And this process needs to be done by engaging four main axes: public authorities, education centres (VET in this case), companies and the individual.Four workshops corresponding to the four steps of skills governance (adaptation, anticipation, transmission and use) will be organised in Florence, Rennes, Bergen and Barcelona between 2020 and 2022, with a double European-regional perspective that allow all the previously mentioned actors build together skills intelligence systems by means of exchanging their experiences (both though workshops and study visits) and taking part in multi-stakeholder open discussion hubs. These workshops will be attended by international regional representatives who wish to learn on the ground from each others' success stories and share their own, but also by local/regional stakeholders who will contribute to dialogue to build strong skills ecosystems based on the skills governance process.In this sense, the Stride for Stride project will add an international aspect to regional success stories, with a two-folded innovative aim:1.Tackling skills intelligence and forecasting at regional level to build regional skills ecosystems, and2.involving all relevant actors featured in the quadruple helix interaction system to help building powerful skills intelligence tools, not only as external ""validators"" of the process, but as an intrinsic part of it.A regional perspective for skills challenges mapping and forecast is of utmost importance to tackle the new opportunities that industry 4.0, SDGs and soft skills relevance are already opening in Europe. Regions allow a closer contact with citizens and are in a privileged position to assessterritorial economic, labour and well-being needs, including lifelong and lifewide learning opportunities. This project will also serve as a starting point for the development of exhaustive territorially-aware assessment tools that complement existing ones such as Cedefop’s national skills forecasts and OECD skills outlooks."

<< Background >>USWE was launched to update the descriptions of the VET profiles in the Shipbuilding Sector registered in ESCO .The purpose was to update the most demanded VET profiles to include the emerging skills request by European shipyards. USWE also wanted to adapt the sectoral VET profiles to the demands of industry 4.0 and to the environmental regulations.For that purposes, USWE had given relevance to the transversal and green skills so necessary for the exploitation of industry 4.0 technologies.<< Objectives >>The general objective was to provide evidence of skill needs in the Shipbuilding Sector. It was divided into smaller operative objectives:O1: Gather and interpret evidence of skills needs.O2: Analyse trends and challenges impacting the sector.O3: Assess the skills gaps and mismatches .O4: Analyse the impact of such skills needs on growth and employment.O5: Analyse major trends affecting interrelated sectors to capture potential spill overs.O6: Identify needs in terms of training provision.<< Implementation >>USWE was executed through:Analyse the skills management situation in the sector.Forecast trends and challenges.Describe the production process to identify phases, activities and skills.Gather information from stakeholders to validate the proposals of USWE.Adopt some EU Tools as supportive models for our work.Analyse the European Shipyards’ and Online Agencies' job offers.Write the description of the 25 most demanded VET Profiles.Write recommendations for policy makers and stakeholders.<< Results >>We consider that among the number of results achieved by USWE, the following ones are the most relevant:R1: Analysis of the State of the Art regarding sectoral skills management.R2: Identification of drivers of change and the impact of Industry 4.0R3: Adoption of a Sectoral Taxonomy of 50 VET ProfilesR4: Descriptions of 25 VET Profiles for European Shipyards, for Training Providers and for VET studentsR5: Recommendations for stakeholders and policymakers and new European projects proposal

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The MachinE Tool ALliance for Skills (METALS) intended first to map out and identify skills needs in the European machine tool sector, studying which technology areas would become more prominent and where more competences would be needed. Second, it aimed at preparing online learning materials in line with the emerging technologies identified.To this extent, in the initial phase of the project, the consortium conducted surveys, interviews with experts and desk research and concluded that additive manufacturing is a technology area that would prominently impact on the skill set of the European machine tool workforce between 2015 and 2025. On the basis of these findings, the consortium then prepared a European machine tool skills panorama concretely presenting skills needs in key areas of the advanced manufacturing process (such as design, operation and maintenance) within this time span This panorama paved the ground for the development of a curriculum on additive manufacturing at EQF level 5, whose final version included 27 learning units (26 in the English version) divided along three main knowledge areas: work process-oriented area, additive manufacturing-specific area and entrepreneurship-oriented area. Based on this curriculum, METALS partners prepared e-learning materials meant to address the current and future skills gaps in the European machine tool industry, particularly in relation to additive manufacturing technologies. These learning materials were prepared with significant focus on clearly defined learning outcomes and made freely available in English, Italian, German and Spanish in the project e-learning platform (https://metals.mobil-lernen.com/en/elearning). The array of project results has been endorsed by a variety of leading actors in this community, including additive manufacturing machine producers and universities.