<< Background >>The European Community has a strong commitment to support the development of the “Sustainable Blue Growth”, as a sector working as an engine of human and economic development. This is such a high priority that the United Nations proclaimed 2021-2030 “The Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development”. According to the European Commission, European coasts and seas have potential to deliver sustainable growth and jobs in the coming years and contribute towards the Green Deal objectives. The way to achieve this is investing in new, blue skills and career development. One of the key features for this blue development is the digitalization: Intelligent sensorisation and monitoring, Artificial Intelligence and Big Data analysis, all based on three main skills: electronic, communication and programming. The last Union for the Mediterranean (UfM) Ministerial declaration on Sustainable Blue Economy (2 Feb-ruary 2021) reaffirmed “the need to prioritize education, vocational training and scientific capacity, in-cluding technology transfer, to anticipate transformative technological trends and promote just transi-tions”, as well as “the importance of working closely with the private sector to promote innovation and identify and address skills gaps”.The report “Strategy baseline to bridge the skills gap between training offers and industry demands of the Maritime Technologies value chain, 2019” (part of the MATES project, funded by Erasmus+) showed that the main paradigm shifter on the skill requirements is the digitalization and Smart Grid and Sensor, having answered more than the 85% experts from different European institutions and companies related to shipbuilding and marine renewable energy that this skill will become mainstream and more than 75% that it will affect the job situation. It will have an impact on a wide range of occupations, from marine engineer to electronical maintenance and repairing. The main actions proposed in this study were train-ing, reskilling/upskilling workforce in digitalization skills and enhance ocean literacy.The education provided by the Vocational Training centers to their students despite ensuring getting some of these skills and the competence needed to work for example in electronic or equipment mainte-nance, does not cover the marine environment peculiarities, the requirements of the emerging compa-nies related with the Blue Growth or the new job opportunities, losing a wide range of job opportunities. This project will design a specialization online course focused on the students in vocational training cen-ters. It will provide them with the knowledge needed to increase their opportunities to work in the blue economy sector. They will learn how skills learned during their education need to be adapted to an envi-ronment as the ocean, the special requirement that the marine and maritime companies have and what the sustainable blue growth initiative is. Besides, they will be introduced to the blue entrepreneurship opportunities available in this sector. The concrete objectives of this project are:- Follow an in-depth research and analysis at a European level of the demands and needs of the labour market to detect what the requirements of these companies related with the digitalization of their com-panies are.- Design and develop the complete online curriculum for VET, developing a pilot training for the students as well as a training for the trainers. - Launching a professional mentoring program for those students who are interested in entrepreneurship initiatives, as well as providing guidance in order to select mentors.- Design and launch of an online collaborative platform in order to foster the networking among students following the course and the companies where these skills are required and other potential stakeholders.<< Objectives >>This project will design a specialization online course focused on the students in vocational training cen-ters. It will provide them with the knowledge needed to increase their opportunities to work in the blue economy sector. They will learn how skills learned during their education need to be adapted to an envi-ronment as the ocean, the special requirement that the marine and maritime companies have and what the sustainable blue growth initiative is. Besides, they will be introduced to the blue entrepreneurship opportunities available in this sector. The concrete objectives of this project are:- Follow an in-depth research and analysis at a European level of the demands and needs of the labour market to detect what the requirements of these companies related with the digitalization of their com-panies are.- Design and develop the complete online curriculum for VET, developing a pilot training for the students as well as a training for the trainers. - Launching a professional mentoring program for those students who are interested in entrepreneurship initiatives, as well as providing guidance in order to select mentors.- Design and launch of an online collaborative platform in order to foster the networking among students following the course and the companies where these skills are required and other potential stakeholders.<< Implementation >>The main activities to be developed in the frame of BLUEDIVET project are:1) Follow an in-depth research and analysis at a European level of the demands and needs of the labour market to detect what the requirements of these companies related with the digitalization of their com-panies are.2) Design and develop the complete online curriculum for VET, developing a pilot training for the stu-dents as well as a training for the trainers. 3) Launching a professional mentoring program for those students who are interested in entrepreneur-ship initiatives, as well as providing guidance in order to select mentors.4) Design and launch of an online collaborative platform in order to foster the networking among stu-dents following the course and the companies where these skills are required and other potential stake-holders.5) Organization of 4 face-to-face and 3 online Transnational Meetings for the project partners (every five months).6) Organization of a Short-term joint teacher training event to ensure that all mentors are aligned with the strategy of BLUEDIVET using some procedures and approaching for supporting the students.7) Organization of the BLUEDIVET final conference to be held in Cartagena (Spain).<< Results >>OUTCOMES DURING THE PROJECT:- Bringing a common knowledge of: * The level of offer in education provided by the Vocational Training centers to their students in order to acquire the competences required for the blue digitalization based on electronic, communication and programming. * The skills needed by the marine and maritime companies.The aim is to analyze the digital competences demanded by the labour market within the blue growthfield and compare them with those actually acquired by the professionals hired to develop these func-tions. Then, a complete curriculum for vocational training will be proposed to narrow this gap and thus improve the employability levels. This result will contribute to build evidence on the skills needs of the society through skills anticipation.- Design and implementation of an innovative educational package based on the information collected after the finalization of the research followed for the first outcome. All the educational materials will be designed and developed in order to be implemented in an online scheme, using an e-Learning platform. This innovative educational package will be tested on the ground through a pilot experience developed in the four countries involved in the project in order to improve it and obtain a definitive version that could be easily exportable and transferable to other geographical contexts and European countries.- Design and launch of a Mentorship program in order to encourage and accompany those students who are willing to start their own blue businesses. In this way, a complete common and shared methodologi-cal manual will be designed to guide entities to select mentors, fulfilling a set of agreed criteria, who will be accompanying them for taking first steps in their business adventures within the blue sector, not only to those that have participated in the training program. Mentorship will enable these entrepreneurs to gain as much autonomy as possible, thus contributing to the successful implementation of their business ideas.- Create, through a collaborative platform, a European Network of Experts on blue digitalization, blue skills and, all in all, blue growth. This action will be supported with the design and spread of an online collaborative platform in order to foster the networking among students following the course and the companies where these skills are required, as well as key stakeholders and experts from different coun-tries.OUTCOMES ON ITS COMPLETION:- Ensure that VET curricula and training programs are actually meeting blue industry needs in terms of digitalization.- Ensure that students are equipped with blue digitalization skills as well as soft skills enabling them to develop new ideas and products, and possibly launch their own start-ups, updating their skills even for future needs that are still unknown.- Create a network of the workforce being trained on blue digitalization and the entities related to the blue growth in order to cover the job opportunities in the sector with a good specialized knowledge.