HEIs in the MENA region have been struggling to uphold their functions, as demonstrated by high unemployment rates for university graduates and lack of community engagement and public debate. Given the expected increase in university enrollment and the global progression of technological advancements, HEIs need to move towards more value-added activities to produce graduates who are capable to join the labour market, prepared to participate in research, and aware of contemporary issues such as Sustainable Urban Mobility. This project intends to strengthen the relations between HEIs and the wider economic and social environment through a forum for UPGRADE. UPGRADE aims at directing the development of higher education and research, and involving transport businesses, to address the transport challenges in Partner Countries and serve the needs of unprivileged minorities of society. Being a hot topic on the international agenda, UPGRADE puts emphasis on the global refugee crisis that evolved lately in the EU and the MENA region. In particular, addressing the accessibility and mobility challenges of refugees in their host countries is selected as a case study. The project blends theoretical knowledge and best practices from different fields to tackle a real-world case study through the involvement of NGOs, local voluntary associations, and the business sector. Multidisciplinary courses will be taught at HEIs of Partner Countries after a process of curriculum reforms and lab developments. Project outputs include developed courses, upgraded facilities, training of trainers and students, transport business model, and publications. The diversity of courses and the real-life exposure will allow students to have the chance to get out of the cocoons of their universities, spread their wings, and test their ability to soar. As such, UPGRADE responds to a regional educational need and an international commitment.

E-TALEB is a structural project aiming at developing Lebanese Professional Standards in Teaching and Learning and cooperating for innovation and exchange of good practices and experiences relevant to similar frameworks established in Europe.The main objective of this project is to support the initial and continuing professional development of staff engaged in teaching and foster dynamic approaches to teaching and learning through creativity, innovation and continuous development in diverse academic disciplines and/or professional settings. The project will support in creating a community of researchers in different disciplines who share inter and intra university practices in teaching and learning.E-TALEB will acknowledge the variety and quality of teaching, learning and assessment practices that support and underpin student learning including instructional technology. It will also demonstrate to students and other stakeholders the professionalism that staff and institutions bring to teaching and their support for student learning. As a result, the project will have high national impact, providing at once many outcomes: - Establishing Professional Standards Framework in Teaching & Learning LBPSF;- Offering Post-Graduate Certificate Programme in Teaching and Learning in Higher Education for Faculty members;- Collaborating interuniversity activities centered on training and educational programs; - Creating Centers for Teaching Excellence inside each of the participating universities supporting faculty and students in their teaching and learning activities;- Supporting the universities in their accreditation programs by having a formal process for teaching and learning;- Developing human capital and talented experts in teaching and learning in the participating countries;- Sustaining the competitiveness of the Higher Education field in Lebanon, the Middle East and participating EU countries;- Publishing the Lebanese Journals on Teaching and Learning.

In 2020 the COVID-19 situation forced academic libraries to move exclusively to the Web. The closure highlighted some of the issues the scientific community had to face: unavailability of physical collections, lack of digitalization of paper assets, inadequacy of catalogues, absence of information on e-books and electronic resources availability, problems of delivering digital documents to users, general lack of competencies in searching and retrieving digital documents. To respond to the COVID emergency in the library field, in April 2020 a group of librarians under the aegis of IFLA created “Resource Sharing during COVID-19” (RSCVD https://rscvd.org/): the first experiment in free digital resource sharing worldwide. RSCVD is based on the voluntary contribution of a hundred librarians around the world, who worked with the tools available at that moment in order to share the documents of their libraries with the world academic community.After an initial very successful reaction to COVID emergency, now the time is ripe to put in place a multifaceted action which can create long lasting impacts. The project promotes cooperation and partnership among 5 organizations from Italy, Netherlands, Turkey, Lebanon, Spain: a national research institution, the worldwide umbrella organization for libraries, 3 universities. Associated partners have a key role as direct beneficiaries of the project outputs. The envisaged activities are:- a wide reflection about the meaning of Resource Sharing and practices involving the worldwide information community, fostering the emergence of a common European perspective. This reflection will lead to a publication to be disseminated worldwide and used as training material (O1); - the optimisation of the existing system for accessing digital documents through the design of a service model supplementary to the existing one and the production of an open source management software that improves the available offer and optimizes workflows by pursuing an open source approach (O2); - the strengthening of librarians’ skills in using the renewed service in order to provide users fast and free access to knowledge; - a set of distance training initiatives addressed to the educational community (teachers, researchers, students) aimed at strengthen competencies in searching and retrieving quality academic documents, and related preparation of specific training materials (O3).As for methodologies, open source and distance learning are the two main concepts underpinning the entire project, in order to widen as much as possible the participation to training activities and the use of produced outputs. At the end of the project the following results are expected:- more effective, appealing and fast digital resource sharing system thanks to the adoption of a new open source software (O2)- increased number of online open professional training courses available for librarians- increased number of online open Information Literacy trainings available for the whole scientific community- online openly available lesson plans, educational materials and assessment tools- increased number of librarians, teachers, researchers and students of universities and research organizations aware of Resource Sharing principles and practises, thanks to the Publication (O1), the training initiatives (C1 and C2) and related materials (O3)- increased number of university and research libraries active in RSCVD group in Europe and in the world, thanks to training initiatives (O3) and dissemination actions- upgraded competencies in resource sharing for librarians piloting the courses- developed information seeking and retrieval competencies for teachers, researchers and students participating to the project.Potential longer term benefits:- improved capacity of students, academic teachers and researchers in being connected to their institution’s educational mission through the library service which provides them with high quality digital content- further development of the existing resource sharing network of librarians in Europe and at worldwide level, which is in line with IFLA strategy of inspiring and enhancing professional practice through development of standards, guidelines, best practices, new tools and infrastructures that support the work of libraries (IFLA Strategy 2019-2024).Expected direct participants to training activities are in total a minimum of 100 persons, while participants to other project activities (i.e. dissemination actions) are a minimum of 2.500 persons.Impacts are expected at local, regional, national and European level, but also beyond Europe because IFLA is a worldwide organization with more than 1,500 Members in over 150 countries. The impact will rely on application and diffusion of the deliverables produced by the project. The dissemination drivers will be the consortium partners themselves and educational institution members of the Project network as Associated Partners.

As Europe shifts to a bio-based circular economy, a plethora of new packaging restrictions have emerged. MAGNO seeks to improve packaging effectiveness, sustainability, efficient usage, end-of-life (reuse and recycling), and innovative business practices in EU food systems through revolutionary strategies shaped for the ecological transition required by the European Green Deal and EU 2030 climate target plan. These strategies will strengthen the EU food and packaging policy frameworks at a local and regional level. They will also increase social innovation, consumer participation and acceptance of new packaging designs and production models in cross-border food value chains through a web platform and a series of citizen science tools. At the beginning of the project, an overview of Europe’s ecosystems and value chains for different kinds of plastic packaging will be studied. A detailed quantification of impacts and solutions in terms of health, environment, raw materials, and sustainability will then be developed to set the basis of an Ecosystem Digital Twin software. The Digital Twin will be programmed to support the analysis of different scenarios which contributes by not only providing ground-breaking strategies for improving the packaging sector but also identifying the best options in terms of innovative business. The whole project will be supported by the active participation of food multi-actors (researchers, food business operators, food packaging producers, developers of sustainable packaging, packaging converters and recyclers, consumers, and local and regional authorities). Their contribution to the creation of results and validation of the final strategies will prevent and reduce plastic packaging pollution for the food and packaging sectors.

The economic crisis and pandemic in South Mediterranean and sub-Saharan countries have put the HEIs in a challenge to accommodate for the new requirements of online teaching. The RL4Eng project aims to improve the quality of higher education in third countries and make it more relevant into the today’s digital transformation world through establishing Remote and Virtual Laboratories for Teaching and Training Engineering Students to modernize the current teaching approaches and improve the digital and entrepreneurial capacities of both students and teachers in South Mediterranean and Sub-Saharan HEIs. The project’s contribution to the priorities of the call includes the digital transformation under which digital education is the focus of the project. Online teaching for laboratories has been implemented in EU countries with successful outcomes. The involvement of different European Universities will help integrate good practices and minimise potential risks in implementing the RL4Eng project. South Mediterranean HEIs have identified the necessity of training with numerous initiatives available in the European system. Few Research is available on the effective delivery of remote labs and take-home labs. The project involves several workpackages in efforts made to elevate the knowledge of remote labs and take-home labs in the partners institutions via capacity building for students, staff and faculty and share of experiences. A remote lab will be established in each country of the partners institutions and a take-home lab will be established in each HEI of the partner countries. The very nature of remote labs, and take-home labs makes them sustainable and easily scalable as they becomes part of the university structure and receives part of its budget. Moreover, the nature of the remote labs makes them sustainable as they are accessible from everywhere and could be used for both teaching and for research.