Futurepreneurs has become an international entrepreneurship development programme focusing on business sustainability and raising a new generation of conscious and responsible entrepreneurs. The initiative motivates young people, especially those with fewer opportunities, to engage into generating sustainable and impactful business ideas, teamwork and learning opportunities along with successful business mentors. The programme was developed in cooperation with company Pure Birds (the Netherlands), Baltic Environmental Forum (Lithuania), and Lower Silesian Regional Development Agency (Poland) in the frames of Erasmus+ Strategic Partnerships for Youth project “Futurepreneurs”. In spring of 2017 the programme was piloted in Lithuania, and in 2018 was held in both Lithuania and Poland. Over 900 young people expressed their desire to become entrepreneurs of the future. Futurepreneurs has also contributed to promoting women's entrepreneurship, with more than half of the young people interested in starting a sustainable business being women. The success of the Futurepreneurs initiative has been driven by intensive work with stakeholders - science and education institutions, businesses, youth organizations, media. Within 3 months, the teams took part in 5 thematic workshops. According to established criteria, the teams were awarded in the categories of clean-tech, fin-tech, ICT, security and defence, best sustainable idea and best prototype. Futurepreneurs attracted European Business Angels and Luxembourg Business Angel networks. Besides the developed methodology, Futurepreneurs also offers a list of sustainability problems and online training materials available on www.futurepreneurs.eu, Facebook and Youtube channels. Futurepreneurs initiated by Sunrise Valley Science and Technology Park brought the participants and like-minded people into a community, sharing good practices and continuing teamwork. The participants noted that Futurepreneurs encouraged them to take initiative and allowed to believe that not only the most intelligent or wealthiest can create start-ups - the success comes to those who have a goal and work purposefully. 90% of the respondents would recommend their friends and colleagues to take part in Futurepreneurs. Futurepreneurs started off as Erasmus+ Strategic Partnerships for Youth project and continues under coordination of Sunrise Valley Science and Technology Park.

The European Union leads globally in sustainable and climate technologies, yet maintaining this leadership necessitates ensuring broad accessibility across all Member States for GreenTech, AgriTech, and ClimaTech innovators. Despite significant potential, disparities persist in gender inclusivity and resource distribution, risking the exclusion of certain regions and stakeholders without intervention. The WE-RISE project addresses these challenges by empowering underrepresented female entrepreneurs in GreenTech, AgriTech, and ClimateTech. Through a strategic blend of funding and tailored support, the consortium aims to amplify the market presence of high-potential women-led startups, particularly from emerging European economies. The project's pillars include amplifying market presence through targeted funding and investor matchmaking, integrating startups into the ecosystem through cross-border acceleration activities, and providing a holistic growth program. By prioritising inclusivity, diversity, and systemic change, WE-RISE seeks to enhance the impact and visibility of Green-Women-led startups, contributing to the broader advancement of the European innovation ecosystem towards sustainability.

"The maker culture is a contemporary culture emphasizing learning-through-doing or active learning in a social environment. Maker movement puts power in the hands of the people to fund, design, prototype, produce, manufacture, distribute, market and sell their own goods. This new trendy movement impacts global manufacturing as creation shifts geographically to local, philosophically to sustainability and legally to force the adaptation of new IP laws as people move from consuming to creating and sharing. The Circular / Sharing Economy impacts core business models and higher education (HE) must be ready to address the change by developing relevant competencies of graduates in order to secure innovation and growth. Not only is 3D printing the main technology for prototyping, it is also hyped as the technology to bring about the next industrial revolution. According to Verified Market Research, the Global 3D Printing Market was valued at USD 8.08 Billion in 2017 and is projected to reach USD 49.74 Billion by 2025, growing at a Compound Annual Growth Rate of 25.5% from 2018 to 2025. The comprehensive research has been done by project consortium analyzing around 100 university makerspaces, including Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Technical University of Denmark, Aalto University and other partners. The conclusions showed that similar structures are emerging rapidly but they lack clear recognition frameworks, access guidance, strategic integration of university makerspaces into study process, networking between universities, public and private makerspaces and businesses. Thus, the aim of the HEI MAKERS project was to increase innovation and creativity through partnership of HEIs and technical spaces, leading to trans-disciplinary approaches and new teaching methods in HE, availability of open resources for formal and non formal education, better entrepreneurial and creativity skills of graduates. The specific objectives sought by the project were fostering collaboration of HEIs, university and private makerspaces, and other businesses; amplifying technological entrepreneurship and technical creativity as key competences; promoting innovative education methods; increasing open resources based learning opportunities; recognising competencies gained through active learning at makerspace as per programmes developed; testing the above-mentioned collaboration concept and ensuring sustainability of results; identifying and attracting new players to join the next stages of the HEI MAKERS initiative.Project partners developed 5 intellectual outputs. Guidelines for HEIs, analyzing how practically collaborate with technical spaces to increase quality of higher education, revealed internal challenges and lack of collaboration among faculties within the same HE institution. Training modules on technological entrepreneurship and technical creativity in 3D printing and rapid prototyping were made available on Moodle for HEIs to improve curricula and for technical spaces – use as self learning / non formal education materials. Intensive study programme as HEI MAKERS international summer school was organized to facilitate the uptake of collaboration concept. As a result, “Makers academy” was launched by Vilnius Gediminas Technical University inviting students to gain rapid prototyping skills already in Spring 2020. The plugin for open code software ""Blender"" allowing more efficient 3D printing was made available online for the Blender community with approx. 8 million downloads annually. Partners organised 6 multiplier events involving 200+ representatives of the target group with highly positive feedback. The direct target group of the project was HEIs, their students, and technical spaces. HEIs were represented in the consortium through LT, LV and RO universities, covering 50+ thousand students. These are the countries with less advanced HE (as per QS World University Rankings) in Europe who need to employ modern teaching strategies in order to catch up with the leaders. Association of technical spaces (TEA, LT) and a private makerspace Ludor (RO) represented technical spaces and ensured their involvement in the project through a number of stakeholders. Indirect target group was business and business support organisations, which employ skilled students or host startups in acceleration or business incubation programmes, represented by Inventya (UK) and SSVSTP (LT). Project HEI MAKERS will continue encouraging more HEIs to initiate collaboration with makerspaces, re-think their study programmes to employ innovative training methods and address the challenges of XXI century labour market. Project's outputs opened up new learning opportunities through practical application of entrepreneurial and prototyping skills, which can further on involve and lead to the commercialisation of new services and products, to attracting potential investors, to creation of global start-ups and spin-offs and thus growing economy."

The FINEX project builds on key innovation actors driving the green and digital transition - EIT Digital (Europe's largest digital innovation ecosystem), EIT Climate KIC (Europe’s largest climate innovation agency and community), the Cleantech Group (the world's leading authority on cleantech innovation) - pairing them with world-class cross-border Research & Innovation centres of excellence, who have been deploying experimentation testbed, living labs, sandboxes, and acceleration tools to turn leading research into market ready innovations - FINEST CoE, KIOS CoE and GATE CoE - as well as, Lithuania’s leading Cleantech innovation ecosystem - Sunrise Valley Science and Technology Park (STP) - a perfect place for innovative technological enterprises to establish and develop businesses, and Riga Technical university (RTU) - the largest Latvian university, leader of the EIT Climate-KIC Hub Latvia, also soon to be a EIT Digital Centre, and with a specific specialised ‘Innovation Ecosystem Development Unit’ a leading actor in local and national digital and cleantech technologies innovation ecosystems with various international education, business support, research and networking programmes. Key Objectives of the FINEX project are: 1. To stimulate and interconnect the six targeted Innovation ecosystems as Europe’s Cleantech powerhouse, enhancing their gender-inclusiveness, openness, competitiveness, and global potential. 2. To jointly develop world-class experimentation spaces and the promotion of a better aligned EU regulatory, fiscal and legal framework. 3. To identify and support Cleantech domains and innovators requiring the development of experimentation spaces capable of supporting the quick deployment of disruptive and novel Deep Tech and solutions with the potential to help Europe achieve Climate and Industrial leadership.

Expert Facilitators lead and guide co-creation processes among stakeholders, enhancing creativity and mutual understanding and ensuring effective outcomes. To excel in their work, facilitators need a diverse set of skills, incl. technical expertise and soft skills like conflict resolution and active listening. Keeping up with the latest co-creation trends/practices (incl. the incorporation of SSH aspects) can be challenging. Although there are many initiatives offering resources to upgrade co-creation skills, they are frequently fragmented and scattered through hundreds of platforms and websites. EU·FFICIENT will create a dedicated platform and methodology to provide facilitators with personalized access to best-in-class co-creation resources, as well as training and networking opportunities. The platform will allow users to self-assess their training needs in co-creation before they access a Customised Training Program comprising easy-to-digest audio-visual material, online and f2f events. Upon completion of the training modules, Expert Facilitators will receive a "Certification of Completion" aligned with EC's vision for lifelong learning and micro-credentials. The project will pilot four Communities of Expert Facilitators (CEFs): Advanced Manufacturing, HealthTech, Mobility, and AI/Digital, facilitating cross-fertilization and cross-comparison. EU·FFICIENT targets over 2,000 facilitators through the four CEFs, with at least 500 actively participating in training – an activity coordinated by UIIN network, the EU leader in university-industry training. The partnership brings representatives from academia (incl. 6 HEIs), industry and the public sector, as well as dedicated experts on co-creation, training, community building, online platform development and policy briefing. The highly complementary consortium is formed by partners from many different backgrounds and geographies (incl. Widening and Associated countries), enabling an agile kick-start of the piloting.