Well-Be project combines the efforts of 4 partners from UK, Bulgaria, Spain and Italy reflecting current challenges in the field of school education arising as a result of the global COVID-19 pandemic crisis. Our project mission is to support secondary education students in building resilience skills and overcoming the negative effects of social exclusion after the end of the epidemic. This goal will be achieved by analysing the psychological (psycho-social) effects of social exclusion in students and, on this basis, updating educational priorities and focusing pedagogical measures on the needs of students in the post-epidemic situation.We have envisaged 2 main intellectual outputs:IO1 - Survey Research Handbook. This output will serve as a comprehensive approach to research the impact of crisis stress on the current mental state of secondary school students. By exploring the psycho-emotional status, attitudes, needs, motivations and types of their stress response we will equip teachers, parents and those interested in supporting young people in the post-epidemic situation and new realities with appropriate, reliable and effective measuring tools and coping skills.IO2 - Teacher's Guide for working with secondary school students who have experienced the COVID-19 crisis: an online repository of How-TOs to support youth’s psychological wellbeing and to keep positive climate at school. This output will provide systematic information on adequate interaction approaches, training methods and specific thematic developments to overcome the effects of the crisis, restore mental well-being and develop personal resilience of students between the ages of 14 to 19.The project addresses two main target groups as follows:- directly - students from secondary education level (14-19 years) who need skills to build resilience and overcome the negative consequences of stress and support to boost their motivation for learning and development;- indirectly - teachers and other educators who need to be prepared and equipped with adequate tools and practical guidelines for interacting and supporting adolescents.In terms of qualitative outcomes we aim to achieve:- students who are better adapted to the post-epidemic situation and who are more effective in dealing with stress; - teachers who are better prepared to participate actively and confidently in this process, by being provided with adequate information and useful resources; - a positive school climate and a more conducive environment for the development of key competences; - a more resilient young generation actively involved in managing the long-term effects of the COVID-19 crisis; - training institutions in Europe which will have practical tools for monitoring the dynamics of students' psycho-emotional status and resourceful guidelines for crisis intervention.The long-term impact will involve the creating conditions for faster adaptation of students to new realities and for the better preparation of school staff on the topic, respectively for better interactions and a positive climate in the school. The in-depth and systematic information on the status of students will provide a starting point for the changes that need to be made in the education system and the resources that are needed so that it responds to the needs of the students and the teachers for coping with critical situations.

<< Objectives >>VR4Learning is a 24-month Project to engage Youth in new learning methods, with a high level of technology incorporation (virtual and augmented reality) with contents in the areas of environment and green transition towards a sustainable society in 2050.The Project will create videos for online courses, and use virtual and augmented reality for digital learning, including training sessions with 3D glasses which will enable learning at a distance in an immersive environment.<< Implementation >>The main activities of VR4Learning centres around the content creation to be used in Virtual Reality courses, focusing on the areas of environment and green transition towards a sustainable society in 2050. Virtual reality scenarios will be created for immersive learning. With these, webinars, workshops and short trainings will be organized to showcase the innovative learning environment proposed in VR4Learning. Lastly, the content created will be made available in the digital library.<< Results >>The main expected result of VR4Learning is enabling an immersive learning environment, made available to all, regardless of background. For instance, youths with reduced mobility or from disadvantaged backgrounds could attend lessons, events, and field visits remotely. This is achieved through the video contents being accessible to all via the digital library.

The INSPIRATION ELEVATOR project combines the efforts of 4 partners, representing three main regions of Europe – Nordic (Norway), Central (Austria) and South Eastern (Bulgaria and Croatia). The starting point of our joint effort is supporting youth workers in introducing, organizing and implementing design thinking processes in their daily interventions with youth in risk, which will enhance youth employability and employment prospects. In most cases, employment support interventions targeting youth at risk have temporary effect (Piqué, M. Angels, 2015). Young persons experience training and support activities to enhance their employability, which in the best-case scenario result in their short-term employment. Following this employment period, they are forced to seek again support from above mentioned services hoping to get sustainable realization in both personal and professional life. Despite the positive effects from national measures, the reality of young persons in risk staying long out of job and education calls for reconsideration of the philosophy and methodology of existing youth work services. As youth trainers, what we notice in our work and the work of our colleagues in youth work community is that most of our efforts are focused on provision of basic skills. In other words, we try to provide young persons with “instruments” to operate successfully in life. While skills development is a crucial factor for success, it would need to be accompanied with building the right set of attitudes, so to be able to apply these skills in the best and sustained manner. Stepping on this premise we have realized one of the limitations of current youth in risk training programmes in our countries, i.e. they don’t fully address the psychological consequences of being at risk such as low self-esteem and decreased drive for achievement and initiative and the need to build strong growth mindsets of learners. The COVID-19 unprecedented crisis on all levels would place youth in risk in our countries and across Europe in even more unfavorable situation, which would require strong resilient aptitude to handle all unpredictable challenges to come. We are determined to develop outputs that will contribute to building this resilience.Our aim is to create conditions for improved employability chances of young people in risk in our countries. Our objectives are: - design and develop methodological manual for youth workers and coach app on how to embed design thinking as a horizontal activity in their daily training and support work with youth in risk to re-/enter the labour market;- piloting the developed outputs with 24 youth workers (8 per partner country) and 48 youth at risk;- expand outputs exploitation to 48 youth workers (16 per partner country) and 96 youth at risk;- disseminate project activities and results to 850 youth workers and other relevant stakeholders. The immediate target group are youth workers. The end users of our efforts are youth at risk. In each partner countries there will be an emphasis on specific youth sub-groups, e.g. Refugees and Migrants (Norway); Roma (Croatia); Economically Disadvantaged (Austria and Bulgaria). ++Tangible results (outputs)++1. IO1 – Methodological manual for introducing design thinking in youth work, electronic document available in all partner languages and English.2. IO2 – Coach app for youth workers to develop their design thinking mindset and encourage application in their daily work. 3. 72 youth workers integrate IO1 and IO2 in their daily work (piloting: 24 and exploitation:48).4. 144 youth at risk are engaged in new youth work activities, led by youth workers using IO1 and IO2 (piloting: 48 and exploitation:96).5. 850 youth workers and other stakeholders reached through dissemination activities (1 multiplier event, 24 online publications, 16 thematic presentations at external events, ongoing information provision).++Intangible results (outcomes)++1. Improved professional competences of youth workers in partner organisations and beyond to embed design thinking principles and processes in their daily work with youth in risk. 2. Increased professional development motivation of youth workers.3. Improved motivation for learning and development of youth at risk.4. Improved employability skills of youth at risk. 5. Improved awareness of the benefits of design thinking of the wider youth work community and other relevant stakeholders.The overall impact of our efforts will be to foster social inclusion of youth in risk and raise the quality of professional learning opportunities for youth workers in partner countries and beyond.

<< Objectives >>Project AIM comes as a response to the lack of inclusive entrepreneurship opportunities and entrepreneurial skill gaps highlighted in the Missing Entrepreneurs Report 2021. The significant gap between youth ambition and action needs to be addressed. Project AIM aims to bridge the skill gaps, in particular, with regards to financial literacy, digital skills and business acumen, by developing the students’ entrepreneurial skills, enabling them to transform ideas into a start-up.<< Implementation >>Online workshops will be organized within the scope of promoting entrepreneurship, focusing on 3 key areas, (1) Enhancing business acumen: covering strategic planning and risk management, networking and soft skills, maintaining a growth mindset; (2) Financial literacy: covering budgeting and financial analysis, forecasting, performance monitoring; and (3) Basic digital skills: covering online marketing, digital security. An inclusive entrepreneurship mentoring model will be developed.<< Results >>Project AIM expects to enhance the level of confidence among youth to start up a company with the entrepreneurial skills acquired from workshops and mentorship programs within the IEMM, with at least 400 students directly impacted. As a result, the percentage of youth realizing their entrepreneurial potential within 5 years after graduation is expected to increase by 30%. At the same time, the effectiveness of the program and workshops will be continuously assessed for improvements.

The DiARC project combines the efforts of 4 partners and an extended network of 8 associate partners, representing two main regions of Europe – Western (UK, Belgium), and South Eastern (Bulgaria and Slovenia). The purpose of our collaboration is to support young people to become more resilient in addressing the negative impact of COVID-19 and similar future crises. This will be achieved by supporting professional artists, who are negatively impacted on by the pandemic, to improve their entrepreneurial competencies and prospects of alternative employment as online trainers of young people.With this project we aim i) to integrate our know-how in providing training for young people in the fields of creativity, entrepreneurship, coaching and ‘soft skills’ into a comprehensive online training course (IO1) for nurturing resilience and ii) to encourage them to develop their artistic skills and competencies in combination with their entrepreneurial skills, in order to better serve themselves and their communities. We will train professional artists (IO2) to become online trainers in this course. We will enrich the online training process through a set of digital creativity cards (IO3). Our proposal directly links with the COVID-19 Call main youth horizontal priority and the ongoing youth specific priority, with the emphasis on the quality of youth work.Our innovation proposed is related to digitalising our youth creativity training opportunities by emphasising two dimensions:*Content - integrating creativity and entrepreneurial learning, which will allow for young people and professional artists to use their creative skills and entrepreneurial competencies to improve their employability prospects and increase their capacity to address individual and community challenges.*Delivery - engaging professional artists who are suffering from the financial recession, to develop their youth work skills and competences in the delivery of online creativity training.Our project's acronym is DiARC symbolises our attempt to bridge partners from different EU countries around all highlighted topics and search for a solution matching our resources and expertise in order to increase the resilience of young people and the arts and cultural communities to the negative consequences from COVID-19. The concrete objectives that we will pursue to implement our aim are to: -Design and pilot an online training course in creativity for young people-Design and pilot an online training course for professional artists in the delivery of creativity training and development for young people-Design and pilot an interactive tool (digital creativity course) to ensure engagement of learners-Engage 100 young people and 12 professional artists in piloting all outputs-Engage 200 young people and 24 professional artists in the exploitation of all outputs-Engage 400 youth workers and other relevant stakeholders with the project concept and future use of outputs.We expect the following impact to emerge from achieving the main tangible and intangible results:*For young people:By engaging young people in peer learning activities through the online creativity course, will have an immediate effect on enhancing creativity skills and the motivation to utilise them to address individual and community challenges. We will provide them with an online creativity training that also emphasises 'hard' skills, related to areas such as entrepreneurship and project management. We therefore expect to observe an increased application of initiative and entrepreneurship, improved levels of skills for new business creation in the arts and cultural sectors and beyond and enhanced digital skills. These immediate effects will contribute to the resilience on individual and community levels, which can also be expressed as preparedness to face unpredictability and uncertainty in a constructive way.*On professional artists:Their competences in creative youth work will improve. They will receive opportunities for the direct application of their new competences in pilot training activities. Their opportunities for employment and entrepreneurial competencies will improve. The long-term effect will be that they will widen their sources of income in times when the art and cultural sectors are suffering and still be able to keep working on their professional practice. Through the project they will have opportunity to connect with professional artists from other countries and engage in other initiatives.In the long-term, by training resilient young people we will contribute to the next generation of young people, who instead of being afraid of uncertainty, will embrace it as a source of innovation. We will contribute to training young people to be sensitive to community challenges and to see transnational collaboration as a driver for quality sustainable solutions.