"The aim of the project ""A Journey to Independence"" is to support young people with visual impairment towards the development of soft skills in the field of: teamwork, entrepreneurship, foreign languages, communication, establishing and maintaining interpersonal relationships, and exchange of experience at international level. The project also provides for increasing the professional skills of people working with blind and visually impaired youth and developing effective methods of using non-formal education to support formal education of people with visual disabilities through intersectoral cooperation and strengthening the attitude of continuous improvement of professional qualifications and personal development. The project will support social integration and increase the chances of young people with vision impairment as potential workers.The beneficiaries of the project will be both visually impaired and blind youth, as well as people working with young people with this type of disability. The project will be realised together with foreign partners: Light into Europe Charity in Romania and Conseil Departamental de Seine St Denis in Bobigny. The project participants will be 18 young people with visual impairment from three partner countries: France, Romania and Poland (3 groups of 6 people) aged 15-24, and due to the special needs of young people, 12 people working with blind and visually impaired youth (4 people from each country). Based on the experience in working with young people with visual impairment and internal regulations of the coordinating organization, such a number of accompanying people is necessary to ensure safety and comfort of socially low-functioning project participants.Project activities spread over 27 months result from the special needs of the participants. In the first year of the project (09.2020 - 09.2021) the following activities are planned: 2 International Project Meetings in Romania and France, in which 2 representatives of each organization and 1 representative of youth will participate; peer contact between project participants using online tools (e.g. Padlet, Google Hangouts) to get to know each other and work together; 2 Short training programs for people working with youth, where the diverse experience of partners and the number of solutions used in partner countries will allow the exchange of experiences and abandoning existing schemes in work with disabled people. The exchange of good practices in relation to a specific group of recipients will help to establish and strengthen cooperation between organizations and prepare the meetings for young people. In the second year (09.2021-11.2022) there will be 3 youth mobilities in each partner country, during which the youth will participate in thematic workshops (Poland - everyday activities, Romania - art therapy, France - accessibility of public places for disabled people). The peer contact of people from different EU countries is also significant here. It will serve to increase linguistic, social and intercultural skills, which will facilitate the process of entering into adulthood. Disabled youth will develop self-confidence, independence and positive life attitude. An International Project Meeting in Poland is planned in 10/11.2022 to evaluate the project and to develop a strategy for the dissemination of project effects. The assumed project results will include: increase of practical competences in the field of soft skills, establishing international contacts with peers, creation of 1 show of the effects of artistic workshops for the local community (exhibition of participants' works, presentation), 3 scripts of youth workshops, 2 training plans for youth workers, 3 films/presentations summarizing the workshops. The scripts will be prepared taking into consideration the needs of people with visual impairment and could be downloaded for free from the organization's websites. In addition, 21 people participating in short training programs will improve their skills in working with people with disabilities and increase their interest and positive attitude towards introducing methods used in non-formal education to formal education. Participants of short training programs will disseminate the acquired knowledge by conducting workshops or lectures for people who did not participate in them. The skills of cooperating with international partners will increase among participating organizations. The activities of the project will be valuable to the organizations participating in them, as well as to other national organizations. Due to working together and sharing good practices new solutions will be developed which will build the European network of relationships and contribute to strengthening international social capital."

Creativity is a valuable workplace skill for the 21st century, a superpower for tomorrow’s workforce, which can be mastered and cultivated. Nevertheless, in most areas of life there is still a prevailing stereotype to associate creativity exclusively with the arts, which hinders creativity taking appropriate place in organisations and businesses. As situation analysis in partner countries revealed, creativity development is not included in formal adult education programmes apart from those related to arts; creativity training is mainly offered as small-scale component within corporate training, but not as consistent courses. At the management level, there is a noticeable lack of understanding that creativity can benefit every function of an organization and therefore requires systematic management. In response to the identified needs of individuals and organisations, the project partners came up with the idea of ACDC 4 You – a European transnational partnership project promoting the development of adults’ creativity using creative processes of participatory music and raising awareness in relation to creativity as a crucial and the most coveted skill for the future economies across Europe and the globe. The project brings the capacity of 5 different organisations – two adult education providers, a professional theatre and film company, a non-profit cooperative and an SME specialised in marketing and communication from Lithuania, Romania, Ireland, Spain and Bulgaria. In ACDC 4 You, we focus on the context as an integral part of any creative process and a factor which can be positively influenced even by the results of a single project. We choose participatory music as a context for its power to unleash individual creativity by making us happy, relaxed and less stressed, thus encouraging divergent thinking. With this project, we consolidate the competencies of adult educators and musicians, thus introducing a new type of trainers prepared to teach adults creativity. The Aim of the Project is to equip adult educators, musicians and other cultural workers - as individuals the most vulnerable to economic shocks, such as those created by the COVID-19 crisis - with the skills and knowledge necessary to become successful facilitators of music-based creativity & innovation training for adults and at the same time gain creative confidence and develop ‘creativity literacy’ themselves.For achieving the aim the partnership will develop the following 4 intellectual outputs:1. Best Practice Collection in creativity training with the specific focus on participatory music2. ACDC: Artistic Creativity Development Curriculum – a 25-hour Train the Trainers Programme for Musicians and Adult Educators as Creativity Trainers3. Creativity Labs – a set of participatory-music based experiential training workshops with videos to develop ideation, creative thinking, problem-solving, collaboration skills in teams 4. Creativity Workbook - an interactive publication consisting of up to 50 practical exercises for individual ‘creativity literacy’ training. 10-15 participants per partner country (50-75 in total) will be involved in piloting of ACDC. All resources and materials will be done in English, with translation in all partner languages and will be available on the partners‘ websites, social media, EPALE and Erasmus+ Project Results platforms.The project will be widely disseminated in partner countries through different channels and activities, organisation of 5 local multiplier events and one International Conference ‘ACDC for Ceative Adults’ an open-air concert, demonstration of the project outputs and practicing participatory music in Lithuania. The innovativeness of the project first of all lays in the approach to creativity as a vital workforce skill which has to be mastered and cultivated on individual and systematically managed on a corporate level. Secondly, the developed outputs represent innovative resources introducing a new type of trainers prepared to teach adults creativity. Thirdly, musicians and other cultural workers are offered an opportunity to start an alternative activity as facilitators of music-based creativity training.The expected impact is: -developed competencies of musicians and adult educators necessary to respond to the ever-growing need to improve adult creativity skills and to become effective creativity trainers-promoted adult education as an alternative field for musicians’ self-expression providing them with more flexibility and resilience in the face of COVID-19 crisis-adult learners as final beneficiaries provided access to a new attractive form of professional development, which will help them to enhance their creativity and improve their position in the labour market.In the long term perspective, the project will contribute to the promotion of a positive attitude toward creativity & innovation in society and encourage the use of project outputs in a wide range of applications.

<< Background >>The 2014 IPCC report states unambiguously: “Human influence on the climate system is clear, and recent anthropogenic emissions of green-house gases are the highest in history.” Knowing that human activities are the main driver of global warming helps us to understand how and why our climate is changing, and it clearly defines our responsibility to address the problem. Goal 13 of the Sustainable Development Goals calls for taking urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts. Today’s youth are key stakeholders who will be affected by climate change and have a vital role to play in contributing to national and global processes of sustainable development. While many young people take their responsibility seriously and connect with each other across Europe for purposes of climate protection, e.g. via Fridays for Future, the majority of these young people are coming from middle or high level income households (Traub, 2020). However, to be able to achieve full climate protection, a society needs to be addressed in which ALL young people are environmentally active, educated and able to make a difference in their everyday lives (cf. EU Youth Strategy 2019-2027).Non-formal youth work portrays the best opportunity to reach out to young people, including young people with fewer opportunities, who are not yet involved in climate justice activities, as those represent their main target group. Although there is abundant education material available on these issues, they are not well-integrated into youth work across Europe and youth leaders and youth workers are accordingly not well equipped to integrate these topics into their daily work with the young people. For these reasons, five organisations from the Czech Republic, France, Germany and Romania, chose to work together in the frame of “I-YES: Inclusive Youth Engagement for Sustainability - Tools for Youth Leaders”. The main aim of I-YES is to bring topics of climate justice and sustainability into non-formal youth work, using the approach of Global Citizenship Education (GCE). Non-formal youth work and GCE are related concepts which go beyond formal education, aiming to establish values, lifestyles and attitudes, addressing the intrinsic motivation of young people and promote self-efficacy within life-long learning processes. Studies in many countries show that climate anxiety is an increasing phenomena among young people. In a recent study of the Institut Futur of the Berlin Free University, youth workers relate the increasing relevance of climate-change issues in their work and the need to be better qualified to deal with these challenges.<< Objectives >>Studies have shown that efforts to promote sustainability need to communicate the ease and accessibility of pro-environmental behavior and to enhance people’s confidence in their ability to make a difference. Although there is abundant educational material available on these issues, they are not well-integrated into youth work across Europe. Non-formal youth work is voluntary and provides common learning spaces for young people, regardless of their social, financial or educational backgrounds. It has the potential to promote diversity and inclusion and create opportunities for young people, especially those who are marginalized from the mainstream, to actively participate in society. Therefore the concrete OBJECTIVE of I-YES is to equip youth leaders and youth workers across Europe with tools that enable them to holistically integrate the topics of climate justice and sustainability into non-formal youth work. The approach of Global Citizenship Education will allow them to address young people from all social backgrounds. In the long term, this project will contribute to systemic change by increasing the number of young people who are aware of climate justice & sustainability issues, think critically as global citizens and act as agents of change.<< Implementation >>Besides the development of the project results, one joint staff training and four Multiplier Events will take place during the project duration.The joint staff training will be an introduction to Global Citizenship Education (GCE) with the goal of enabling youth leaders & youth workers to integrate inclusive GCE approaches to global climate justice & sustainability topics into the daily work of their organisations. The GCE approach will also be the foundation for the development of the project results, the digital platform and the checklist.Multiplier Events will take place in Czech Republic, France, Germany and Romania, each in October/November 2023. These events will serve for the presentation of the project results and the establishment of new networks and cooperations between youth leaders and youth organisations across Europe.<< Results >>In order to achieve the above outlined project objective, two PROJECT RESULTS will be developed within the frame of I-YES. These are tools to offer youth leaders and youth workers approaches on how to proactively integrate the topics of climate justice and sustainability in their activities with young people from different social backgrounds in non-formal youth work across Europe. R1: The DIGITAL PLATFORM will consist of 6 self-learning sections and will be available in English, Czech, French, German and Romanian. The six sections will partly be newly developed and partly building on already existing learning materials. It will address diversity and include strategies for reaching young people with fewer opportunities.The topics will be the following: 1) Introduction to the Global Citizenship Education approach, 2) didactic principles on how to develop activities for young people (f), 3) support to event/activity planning (opportunities), 4) method toolbox for the implementation of activities , 5) literature, networks and other online resources in the field of GCE and climate justice, developed outside I-YES, 6) information and guidance on inspiring communities to become active and how to become a multiplier, peer leaders and agent for change.. All sections will be based on the GCE approach.R2: The CHECKLIST will be a 1 or 2 DinA-4 pager. It will serve as an information, motivation and dissemination tool. It is a tool for youth leaders on how to approach the topics of global climate justice and sustainability in non-formal youth work, and can also be used to promote the digital platform amongst all target groups of the project. The checklist will be adapted for each participating country and accordingly translated. A template for the checklist will be provided on the platform so that stakeholders from other countries or settings can use this to develop a checklist for their country/region.OTHER OUTCOMESAs aforementioned, in the long term I-YES aims to make the topic of climate justice and sustainability more accessible to young people from ALL social backgrounds and activate them to become change agents. Additionally, networks between youth leaders, youth workers and youth organisations will be strengthened through I-YES. At the beginning of the project an advisory board will be established, including all associated partners. With time, the networks will be extended to include interested youth leaders, youth workers and youth organisations across Europe and beyond.Lastly, in accordance with the European Guidelines for Digital Youth Work, the project will also qualify youth workers to plan and deliver Digital Youth Work according to youth work goals and young people’s needs and aspirations, enabling young people across Europe to connect with one other and expand their media literacy. The necessity of increased digitalisation in youth work due to the Covid-19 crisis has forced, but also enabled, youth workers to make great progress in this area.

"CONTEXT The Europe 2020 Strategy has defined among others, one key priority that is to raise ""Europe’s employment rate – more and better jobs, especially for women, young people and older workers"" so to achieve a benchmark of "" 75% employment rate for women and men aged 20-64 by 2020– achieved by getting more people into work. One of the main obstacles to the full achievement of this ambitious objective is that there are high rates of low-skilled and low-qualified adults that competitive within the labor market. The demand for digital technology professionals has grown by 4% annually in the last ten years. Yet digital skills are lacking in Europe at all levels. Despite continued strong employment growth, the number of unfilled vacancies for ICT professionals is expected to almost double to 756000 by 2020. Furthermore, almost half the EU population lacks basic digital skills. Education and training should equip everyone with a broad range of skills which opens doors to personal fulfilment and development, social inclusion, active citizenshipand employment. Project partners work everyday with adult students in situation of vulnerability facing multiple barriers (such as social exclusion, poverty or discrimination) because of their lack of qualification to be incorporated in the labor market. Within this context the partners of this project have explored these issues and identify solutions to help ADULT students to be inserted in the labor market establishing effective links between adult schools and the world of work and entrepreneurship using social media and ICT. The project partners have identied 3 main NEEDS of the target groups: -Adult teachers and trainers need to acquire the skills to train their adult students on the aware use of ICT and Social Media to find job opportunities and develop their entrepreneurial spirit -Adult students need to scale up their key and tansversal comptences adapted to the digital era to be incoroporated in the labor market -To promote inclusion of adults paying particular attention to adult vulnerable groups with low skills and qualifications promoting equality between women and men, combating discrimination, promoting tolerance and a high-level of quality and sustainable employment, combating long-term unemployment and fighting against poverty and social exclusion. To answer to these 3 main needs the project AIM has been to promote the entrepreneurial spirit of adult learners using social media and ICT to create new e-enterprises ensuring increased opportunities for being incorporated in the labor market in an effective way. ACTIVITIES -""e-entrepreneurship"" training package. The training package contains a collection of video lessons on how to create the digital identity of enterprises - Testing of the training package by adult teachers, trainers in order to make them acquire the skills to exploit the full potential of ICT and social media for to create new e-enterprises ensuring increased opportunities for participation on a modern, flexible and inclusive labor market. -National training experience ""how to become an e-entrepreneur"". Adult students has been trained to promote their entrepreneurial spirit using social media and ICT to create new e-enterprises -International training experience on ""Adopt an enterprise experience"" exploiting social media and ICT. This activity with adult learners took place in Greece. During 5 days 5 adult learners selected for each partner attended this training activity. The participants selected by each partner have been made paying particular attention to adult vulnerable groups, promoting equality between women and men. -Enterprises have collaborated in the workshops in how to exploit social media and ICT for creating a new e-enterprise in Europe. Furthermore adult students have integrated formal, non-formal and informal education. -International Conference about ""International e-entrepreneurship"" in Italy at the end of the project with the participation of all the partnership, adult teachers, trainers and learners, public authorities in charge of adult education policies, trade unions, enterprises.. has promoted the project results and activities. PARTNERSHIP The project has involved 5 institutions of 5 different European countries. The partnership is composed by institutions with experience in adults training and in the development of innovative projects for adult students which have help to reach quality results. OUTCOMES -Training package created to reach the needs of the target groups. -Project website -Learning community -Teacher and students training -Insertion of the project results into the European adult systems -Entrepreneurship classroom -Final conference IMPACT People involved in the project. -100 adult Teachers -30 Enterprises -400 adult students half of them with fewer opportunities -Other stakeholders 1220"

The EntreComp Certificate project addresses a key priority of the EU: to unleash Europe's entrepreneurial potential, removing existing obstacles and revolutionizing the culture of entrepreneurship in the EU. The development of the EU EntreComp Framework (2016) has provided a set of 15 competencies for educational institutions to use as a guide in achieving this aim and the JCR seeks to ‘strengthen the uptake and use of EntreComp in Europe’. Supporting individuals in acquiring and developing basic skills and key competencies is the horizontal priority underpinning this project.The project’s main objective will be to produce an easy to navigate online platform which uses the EntreComp Framework as an accessible curriculum for school and college students to work through experientially and autonomously, leading to a recognised Certificate endorsed by Lancaster University. One of the main strengths of the project will be its focus on the problem of early school leaving and disadvantage. Reducing early school leaving and enabling success for all learners can best be achieved by implementing a whole school approach (EU Education and Training Policy Report 2020). For students this means providing more opportunities for active participation in school life, better careers education and more opportunities to participate in extra-curricular activities. The EntreComp Certificate provides the scope for all of these.Accessibility to entrepreneurship activities will be beneficial to all students and particularly those who find the academic challenges of school difficult. It will give them a different way to prove their competency in life skills and the entrepreneurial spirit, enthusing them to continue their education with a greater understanding of the skills they will need to succeed in the workplace.The online platform will create a clear and concise curriculum for students to follow. It will include an explanatory video, simple powerpoint and information screen and list of suggested activities to complete for each of the 15 competencies of the EntreComp Framework. Students will be able to choose whether they participate at Intermediate or Advanced level. They will upload assessment evidence for each of the 15 competencies and when this is complete they will be able to print off a certificate listing their participation in the Award, endorsed by Lancaster University.The project methodology is to utilise the EntreComp Framework to develop the entrepreneurial skills of students aged 14-20 making them applicable to real life situations. The students will work autonomously with school support. The Certificate will prove their completion of all 15 competencies. The students will gain a real awareness of how an entrepreneurial spirit can help them whatever they choose to do in the future.The partner schools will aim to involve 50 of their students in the pilot scheme, either in producing videos, attending planning meetings or multiplier events, or participating in the award. Through multiplier events such as university open days and workshops, the project will aim to reach another 100 students or stakeholders. The Award will be promoted especially to students in deprived areas as a way of developing their entrepreneurial awareness.The main result of the project will be the E-Learning platform which will be an Open Educational Resource to be used by all: students, teachers, parents and businesses. Further results will be an appreciation of how different partner countries view entrepreneurship and the opportunities available for students in their countries. It will enhance the employability and interpersonal skills of all its participants, and it will facilitate the sharing of good practice and goodwill between teachers. It will also foster good relations with academic institutions and employers through networking and multiplier events.The intended long term impact is to widen the use of the EntreComp Framework in schools, and for ‘entrepreneurship’ to be seen in its context of societal and cultural value, not just economic. It will break down the barriers of ‘entrepreneurial learning’ and bring them into line with PSHE values. Students will see the EntreComp Certificate as a worthwhile indicator of their personal skills - like teamwork, communication, and resilience - that are crucial to navigating the challenges and opportunities of the modern world, and are increasingly valued by employers. Entrepreneurship is regarded by the highly academic Vitae Researcher Development Framework as ‘a set of skills and attitudes that can enable a culture of innovation, creativity, risk taking, opportunism; that underpins employability, enables entrepreneurship, intrapreneurship and facilitates knowledge exchange’. The EntreComp Framework and Certificate will make entrepreneurial skills relevant to all, whatever their future aims, unleashing Europe’s entrepreneurial potential and easily fulfilling the stated priorities.