<< Objectives >>Through a collection of good practices, a network of active initiatives working on food waste will be gained and an international exchange will be enhanced. Educational activities on food waste will be strengthened by creating materials in several languages. Training will empower interested parties to implement educational activities. This will increase awareness of the environmental impact of global food consumption and encourage participants to reflect and act in a more sustainable way.<< Implementation >>1. good practices collection of local initiatives in the countries DE/BE/LUX2. food waste barcamp with workshops and methods training3. project-partnerships, long-term exchange across national borders4. creation of multilingual educational materials and a website documenting and disseminating the project results 5. frequent meetings of project partners to ensure good exchange and network building<< Results >>- A network of active initiatives is created - a best practice collection with three initiatives per partner country is collected on a website- Educational materials will be made available in several languages- A two-day barcamp with at least 40 participants will be held - At least one multiplier training will be conducted- Three project partnerships between the partner countries are established. At least one kick-off meeting will take place during the project period.

<< Background >>It has been over 13 years since more than half of the European Union’s population has stated that the EU conjures up a positive image in their minds.The feelings of Euroscepticism among individuals and on country level have grown significantly over time, with some going as far as decided to leave the EU. When consulting the appropriate, official info channels of the EU we can see that there are certain issues which seem to be driving Euroscepticism and driving the people towards having a more negative image of the EU. However, it is vital to take into account that misinformation has been on a rise in the past decade, with politicians and individuals spreading false information for personal gain. Taking into consideration, that not many people have been educated in what exactly the EU stands for and what it does, what being a EU citizen means, what are your rights and responsibilities, people have a tendency to automatically believe the majority of the information they are given, without questioning it or doing their own research to confirm whether what they have been told is true or not.<< Objectives >>The Europe Diverse and United Project - EDU - was developed to tackle these issues by reaching out to the most important group, the future generation. By educating young children aged between 10 and 14 about all the points mentioned above, EDU project will inspire a need for knowledge as well as fact-checking. The children will be made aware from an early age of what their rights a citizen of the EU are and how much power their voice can hold. They will be inspired to keep up to date with the developments of the EU and take a more active role in their civic participation.<< Implementation >>The project materials will be both educative and interactive and will cover two of the EU’s most important pillars: its culture and its history, as well as they will provide a wealth of additional general knowledge about the current EU. The developed materials will teach the children about the cultural diversity that can be found in Europe, acceptance and understanding of other cultures, as well as Europe’s history. They will cover the creation of the European Union, the drivers behind it, the changes it underwent in the past decades and the changes it made in the lives of its citizens.The games that will accompany each module will be useful for the children to practice what they have learned in an engaging and entertaining manner. The 'European Integration Resource Tool' will serve as a perfect source for all information about the EU and Europe so that the children do not have to go through numerous websites to find the information they need, instead, they will be able to easily access the EDU project website and they will find information of the European Union itself as well as all Member States. This resource tool will be truly innovative as it will be designed with children in mind and it will be user friendly and visually attractive. Additionally, it should be acknowledged that there is an existing EUROPA portal which is a very good point of information about the EU - however, it does not meet the needs of this project target group as it is not developed with children users in mind.<< Results >>The Europe Diverse and United Project aims to educate the children from and early age about the country they live in and what that means as part of the European Union. The produced project materials will inform them about their rights and responsibilities so that they will be able to understand what it truly means to be an EU citizen. The aim of the project is to highlight the importance of Europe's diversity and all the different cultures it contains whilst at the same time also appreciating how all the different people come together under the European Union umbrella and make decisions together which benefit the whole community. By achieving a better understanding of the different facets of Europe and how the European Union functions and the roles that citizens play in the decision-making process, the Europe Diverse and United projects aim to encourage the target group to become more active citizens in their civic duties by keeping up to date with the news, events, and changes and coming to action when the need calls during voting periods and other events in which EU citizens are called to participate in. The project will help the younger generations understand their rights, duties and responsibilities as EU citizens and also the power they hold to make a change by being a more active civic participants.

The FOOD-AWARE (Training materials and visual learning tools for early education on environmental sustainability and responsible food consumption) Project implemented from 11/2018 until 12/2020 from 6 partners in 5 EU Countries. Its aim was to empower European children to grow into responsible and conscientious food consumers by training teachers to educate their students from a young age on the following subjects: Local food production; Food waste; Food chain; Resource efficiency: sustainability and circularity; and Responsible food consumption.To achieve its aim the project produced the following outputs:1) (IO1): Training methodology and training guideA complete training methodology for teacher trainers and teachers (peer learning) to enable them to plan, organise and replicate the teacher training in their schools. 2) (IO2): Project training materials The content and the documentation to support the learning content and delivery of each training module of the teacher training course. 3) (IO3): Project teaching aidsThe learning content, developed for use in classroom, with students, by their teachers to help them introduce the topics in classroom and plan their students’ learning activities. The work for O2 & O3 was organised in the following Work Packages:IO2/WP1: Project website and online training platform developmentIO2/WP2: Training materials for teachers - 5 modulesIO3/WP1: Interactive student activity sheetsIO3/WP2: Educational postersIO3/WP3: Comics for kidsIO3/WP4: Educational videoPartners had to adapt to the COVID-19 outbreak and adjust the additional work for each output as described below:IO1: Additions to the methodology utilised for on-line training delivery along with the updated sections that were modified to include any elements that relate to an on-line training content.IO2: On-line training course with all the training content adapted to an on-line asynchronous training model.IO3: Adaptation of the platform with the learning content (teaching aids) on the project’s website to be easily accessed even as individual activities to support teachers to integrate the teaching aids in their students’ on-line learning.The project team included researchers and technician from 2 Universities (University of Dundee & University of Social Sciences), 1 school (Doukas School), 1 international food organisation (ISEKI), 1 agricultural organisation (The Polish Farm Advisory) and 1 organisation from the business sector (PROPEL). Their different backgrounds were on education, professional development, agriculture, comics, food & diet, and website development. To maximise local and EU impact the partners organised either f2f MEs or on-line MEs at a local (partners’ countries) and European level. The European Final Conference was held, on-line, on December 2020, moderated by ISEKI, with 90+ participants and 15+ presenters and speakers (incl. 3 external key-note speakers). The project developed, planned and organised a 3-day training event, on-line, due to COVID-19 pandemic, with the project’s team members as trainers and partners’ internal staff members as trainees. The development of the training was based on IO1, the content of the training was the content developed under IO2 and the teaching aids from O3 were integrated in their respective modules and presented to the trainees along with suggestions, ideas, and activities to implement in their classroom.

"The main objective of this project is to ensure women in rural communities and in particular in the agri-food sector are socially included. The consortium aim to achieve this by enabling women entrepreneurs in the agri-food sector to access specifically designed entrepreneurial work based training, supportive resources and mentorship. It is noted at EU policy level that ""through training and skills development, rural girls and women can play a much greater role in the development of green food and agricultural value chains, both as current and future agricultural workers and entrepreneurs"". Preliminary research carried out by the consortium indicated that women entrepreneurs are underrepresented in the Agri-Food sector with male entrepreneurs dominating approximately 70% of the field. This business sector has increased for women in the past decade and now needs the support to back it (Ward et al, 2019). The European Commission has identified that ‘when establishing and running a business women face more difficulties than men mainly in access to finance, training, networking and in reconciling family commitments’. This research data fed into the development of the proposed outputs. The project is a follow on project to Educate to Innovate (2018-1-IE01-KA202-038791) also led by the lead partners, GMIT. The Educate to Innovate project team carried out a survey with 109 female food entrepreneurs across partner countries to gain an understanding of the barriers and challenges faced by females in the agri-food sector. The collated results of the survey informed the needs analysis developed for this project which identified the need to provide easy access to specific entrepreneurial training for women in the Agri-Food sector together with the need for women to be able to access business mentors. Mentorship is essential to the growth of any individual. For women, successful mentoring demonstrated increased retention rates and more success in obtaining promotions for those who have mentors. Additionally, successful mentoring of women has been shown to help minimize feelings of isolation and contribute to increased self-confidence and work engagement (Dutta et al., 2011) (Varkey et al., 2012). Previous studies have shown that women consider mentoring more important than men. They also show a significantly greater improvement in professional development from mentoring, however, women are less likely to have mentors or receive formal mentorship early in their careers compared with men (Cross et al., 2019).It is for that reason the consortium decided to incorporate a research element to the project and investigate the impact mentorship can have on sustaining the growth of women entrepreneurs in the sector. Supporting the growth of women entrepreneurs in this evolving sector is the key focus of this project which will in turn contribute to closing the gender gap in entrepreneurship and result in creating innovative agricultural and food activities in rural European areas. Additionally the consortium want to raise awareness of the importance of supporting women entrepreneurs in this sector by attracting more business mentors to the sector and encouraging more women entrepreneurs to engage with mentors. Research has indicated that women are more inclined to avail and engage with mentorship than their male counterparts. In addition to increased business development skills, women find mentorship strong support, a networking opportunity, a way of feeling socially included which has been reported to help replenish the feeling of isolation, fear and lack of confidence often experienced by women in this male dominated sector. The project methodology and activities have been designed to specifically meet the growth needs of our target audiences. The consortium aim to apply mixed methods utilising a combination of both qualitative and quantitative methods throughout the project. 5 intellectual outputs will be produced focusing on providing agri-food women entrepreneurs with access to specifically designed entrepreneurship training and mentorship. 2 LTTAs are scheduled to ensure the design, content and functionality of the project outputs are relevant for the intended audience. 6 multiplier events are planned to ensure wide dissemination of the project outcomes and outputs. Over 200 participants will engage in these activities that will include agri-food women entrepreneurs, mentors, mentees, VET educators, researchers, wider agri community. The outputs will significantly support innovation and entrepreneurship for women in the Agri-Food sector by providing access to a training course designed by academia, enterprise and specifically female/male entrepreneurs in the agri food sector. The research report will produce current data and analysis of the importance of business mentors for females in this sector with the other outputs contributing to supporting women entrepreneurship in Europe's agri-food sector."

The LAND-MOBILITY project will aim to develop training materials for the establishment of land mobility services in all partner countries, and, in turn, hope to promote similar initiatives in all EU Member States and internationally beyond the project lifetime. The project will do this by setting out guidelines for how to establish a land mobility service and developing an animated educational video raising awareness of different concepts of land mobility and the enormity of the problem of access to land that faces European young farmers. This will be accompanied by a number of open access training materials such as animated slides and a mobile training application for land mobility brokers and advisors, as well as training materials for providing information on important topics to the farmers themselves (both successor and predecessor), which will be made available on the project website.Thanks to the relevance and expertise of the partners involved in this project, these materials will be widely disseminated to the target group of local authorities, farm advisory centres, farming organisations and other rural actors via well-established and extensive networks and dissemination channels. This will, in turn, lead to the upskilling of several rural actors and members of the participating organisations by training brokers, as well as the eventual upskilling of the final target (the two farmers, successor and predecessor), by providing them with learning tools to help them through the process, to assist in their farming take-up or slow-down respectively, and additional educational material to cater for their identified needs - not to mention the skills the farming partners will teach each other.LAND-MOBILITY’s training materials and educational videos will use successful pilot examples of land mobility services to raise awareness of the impact that new approaches to land mobility can have on the ageing demographics of the land management sector, increase the establishment and take-up of such land mobility initiatives, and fundamentally lead to better access to land for European young farmers. In turn, this will lead to a more innovative, competitive, environmentally sustainable and technologically-friendly EU agricultural sector, and a slowing of the annual increase in losses in the number of farms in Europe so far. This way, Europe's family farming model can adapt to non-family partnerships in order to stay alive while keeping the same values and principles including quality, diversity and locality of European food and the sustainability of European food production.The aim of the LAND-MOBILITY project is in a first instance to promote initiatives and innovative concepts surrounding land mobility by developing training materials and guidelines for landowners, farmers, authorities and advisors in the area of land mobility services, land management partnerships and farm take-over brokerage. In a second instance, it is to promote agricultural land staying in the sector and a continuation of the EU family-like farming model.Ultimately, the project aims to ensure land in Europe is kept as much as possible in sustainable ownership and is not subject to land abandonment, and so that land becomes a tool for empowerment and entrepreneurship for Europeans rather than an obstacle to it.