<< Background >>Digital technologies can support Europeans working in agri-food sector in providing safe, sustainable and quality food. Not only do they help them “produce more with less”, but they can also contribute to fighting climate change. Digitisation can also play a role in creating a better life in Europe’s rural areas, as is highlighted in the Cork 2.0 Declaration (https://ec.europa.eu/info/food-farming-fisheries ). It states that the use of digital technologies will increasingly be vital for farmers and other rural businesses to enable them to deliver sustainable solutions to current and future challenges.The European Commission (EC) aims to make the agricultural sector and rural areas in Europe digitised and data-empowered. Under the Digital Single Market strategy, the Communication “Digitising European Industry” (https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/digitising-european-industry ) sets out its objective to ensure that “any industry in Europe, big or small, wherever situated and in any sector can fully benefit from digital innovations to upgrade its products, improve its processes and adapt its business models to the digital change”. According to OECD report (https://www.oecd.org/agriculture/topics/technology-and-digital-agriculture/ ) digitalization of the agri-food system involves the risk that the potential benefits will be unequally distributed between rural and urban areas, gender, youth population. In the agri-food sector, the digital transformation will change the structure of the labour market and the nature of work. It will redefine the role of farmers and agripreneurs and alter the skill set required in the agri-food sector.Based on the reports from several EIP-AGRI events they have addressed the opportunities and challenges of digitalization in agri-food sector, we identified the six main domains of competences and skills that people working in agri-food sector would need to effectively take advantage of the digital transformation. Those domains have been used as the main input to design the different project results as they based on the conclusions of the EIP-AGRI events with experts from 27 EU countries. Specifically: - Attitude and open-mindedness- Comprehensive management- Communication and collaboration- ‘Bridging’ - Digital literacy- Advanced digital skills<< Objectives >>The aim of the project is to develop a model of digital skills vocational training course for persons working in agri-food sector and living in rural areas, so they can learn to assess and implement the best practices and technologies for their work.Specific objectives of the project are:- To design and deploy an innovative upskilling pathway addressed to persons involved in agri-food sector and living in rural areas.- To foster the development of digital skills and competences among persons working in agri-food sector and living in rural areas by proposing innovative flexible learning opportunities in different settings (face to face, blended and online)- To promote EUROPAS as a tool for participants to document their skills and experience- To Develop a digital repository of Open Educational Resources for digital skills development the meet the specific needs of persons working in agri-food sector and living in rural areas- To support VET teachers and trainers to develop and use their own resources by proposing a model of using learning scenarios.- To reduce the digital gap in rural areas in Europe through non-formal and informal education;- To Promote lifelong learning in rural areas as a tool for socio-economic development.<< Implementation >>The project has been designed to ensure the active involvement of all partners and to ensure that we capture the specific expertise and knowledge through the allocation of project results lead responsibilities.Partner Meetings - we will hold three partner meetings, which will be hosted by the partners in Poland, Greece and Italy. Six online meetings will be organised.Project results - we will have four distinct project results and partners will lead them according to their experience and expertise. All partners will be involved in the development of each PR. With the size, scope and importance of results we will have in some sub-leads where for specific elements of the Output. The summary of responsibilities is outlined below:Result 1 - Open Educational Resources for digital skills development for persons working in agri-food sector. WUELS who have experience in the topic as Agricultural University will lead this PR. The rest of the partners will be involved on the development of OERs and localization and adaptation in national context.Result 2 - Online self-assessment of digital skills that provide personalized learning pathways- SYNERGASIA ENEGON POLITON - have similar experience on lead the development of online platforms for in other projects. The rest of the partners will work on different competence statements and type of assessment activities for the 6 domains and sub-domains, they will do the initial testing, they ‘ll localise the user interface, the questions and the assessment report to their languages and they’ll pilot use the online tool with at least 100 learners from the primary target group (20/partner)Result 3 - Learning scenarios for the 6 domains identified by EIP-AGRI - Pontydysgu – who had experience on development of educational tools and methodologies and activities to exploit the project outcomes. Each partner will be involved in the development of at least 2 scenarios as will be agreed in second meeting and will prepare the translation of the PR3 in their languages.Result 4 - MOOC – SEDA - have proven experience on organising educational activities. Technical development of the platform will be done by SYNERGASIA ENEGON POLITON (ACP). The MOOC will be run in partner countries for 5 months (month 20 to month 24) with at least 150 participants (30 from each partner organization) and will involve at least 2 VET trainers from each partner (10 in total)Multiplier Events - Each partner will host a multiplier Event (Month 19) and will be responsible for agenda, venue with IT provision, creating database and inviting stakeholders from target groups, capturing evidence for reporting / dissemination, publicity and writing a brief report on the results of the eventDissemination - all partners are effective disseminators of local and European projects. These strengths will be harnessed by creating and delivery of Dissemination Strategy, led by CESIE.Evaluation - capturing evaluation to ensure project delivery and addressing needs of key target groups is important. Pontydysgu will be responsible for the internal evaluation.Sustainability and exploitation we will actively remember the need for the products to be meaningful in the medium to long-term. SEDA will lead in this activity using their technical and learning provision skills to ensure we pitch the product to key target groups<< Results >>The project is expected to produce important results both on an individual and a community level. Both the primary (people working in agri-food sector and living in rural areas) and secondary (VET teachers and trainers) target groups are expected to gain increased skills, competences and self-confidence and they can learn to assess and implement the best practices and technologies for their work.There will be four major groups of products designed to achieve these results :The first is the development of 12 Open Educational Resources will be developed around six domains related to digital skills for people working in agri-food sector and living in rural areas Attitude and open-mindedness, Comprehensive management, Communication and collaboration, ‘Bridging’, Digital literacy and Advanced digital skills. OERS can be used by VET teachers and trainers in different settings (face to face, online or blended trainings). As they will be available to all partners languages we expect to be used by a larger number of learners.The second group of results will be the development and test of a self-Assessment Tool will provide to people working in agri-food sector and living in rural areas with an overview of their own digital competences in line with 6 domains analyzed in previous outcome. It will highlight the competences in which they are strong and motivate them to work to improve the digital skills in which they are weaker by providing an upskilling pathway. As base of the assessment will be used the competency statements that will be produced by partners for the above domains. Competency statements will be inspired by the statements used in DIGICOMEDU framework of the EU and will be categorized in 3 levels Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced.The third group of results will be 12 learning scenarios for different 6 domains analyzed in first outcome and will create a model for using learning scenarios for VET teachers and trainers on how to develop and use their own digital resources. These scenarios will provide trainers with practical guidelines for learning approaches, activities and content when designing their own lesson plans. The scenarios will be also used as a model to inspire trainers to develop their own resources for different contexts, situations and learner groups. Learning Scenarios will be delivered as a publication that will serve as additional dissemination tool for VET providers and any other related stakeholders. The output will also include a model for the development of new learning scenarios.The fourth group of results will be the development and implementation of a Flexible and modular MOOC in all partners’ languages and will allow people working in agri-food sector and living in rural areas to adapt their learning pathway as they go along, to suit their interests and abilities. As learning materials will be used the Open Educational Resources developed and localized in PR1. Modular flexible structure can enable participants to learn in their own time and follow and adapt their own learning path as this defined by the online self-assessment tool (see above).All products will be available under open licenses. They are expected to have major impact after the project in Both the primary and secondary target groups.In addition to the four explicit outcomes, we expect the following results:- Effective dissemination throughout the project from 4 newsletters (distribution 2,000 contacts across the EU), project public Facebook page (300 likes), Project / Partner website (5,000 visits) with the result of increased awareness of the project across all European projects -Multiplier events: The events will be held at month 18 of the project in partners' countries and will promote results of the project.-Evaluation and quality assurance strategy which gives an overview of the evaluation activities within the project.