"The primary objective of the STEER (Supporting the Transition from Education to Employment for Youth at Risk) project was to design, develop, deliver, and test a comprehensive training programme for youth workers in transition planning. Trained youth workers using the knowledge acquired through the STEER project, utilized their training to support the transition from education to employment for NEETs (a young person who is no longer in the education system and who is not working or being trained for work) and young unemployed. Thus STEER project promoted the Erasmus+ horizontal priority for “Inclusive education, training and youth” as it aimed to enhance “the access, participation and performance of disadvantaged learners and facilitating their transitions: between different levels and types of education and training; from education/training to the world of work”.More specifically STEER involved:• Designing and developing a training programme for youth workers, which included modules such as: skills for the future labour market, transition planning, psychological mentoring, developing life management and social skills, developing soft and transferable skills, and provision of career guidance and counselling.• Delivering a series of blended learning train-the-trainer seminars in each partner country, to a total of more than 180 youth workers.• Testing the effectiveness of the STEER training programme in pilot actions that involved the trained youth workers providing transition support to at least 900 NEETs and young unemployed within a four month period.The STEER training programme involved the development of an innovative e-training platform and e-portal (O5) and digital learning content (O3/O4) and guides (O4). The STEER e-training platform was based on open-source, Web 2.0 technologies, in order to ensure its sustainability, and it also adhered to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0, so that its open teaching material would be accessible to both disabled learners and training professionals. The STEER dissemination and sustainability activities mainstreamed and spread the use of the e-training platform and the training programme to all relevant stakeholders at local, national, and European level. As a result, STEER was in accordance to and promoted the Erasmus+ horizontal priority for “Open and innovative education, training and youth work, embedded in the digital era”. In particular, STEER contributed ""to mainstream and spread the utilization of open and innovative education, training and youth pedagogies.” It also “supported synergies between education, research and innovation activities, digitisated quality learning content and promoted the use of ICT as a driver for systemic change which increased the quality and relevance of education, training and youth policies at all levels.”Finally, STEER advanced the Erasmus+ Youth field-specific priority of “Promoting high-quality youth work” by:- Facilitating the transition of NEETs and young unemployed to employability.- Supporting youth workers in developing skills and methods that help them provide assistance to young people facing social and financial obstacles.- Professionalising youth workers and furthering the validation of youth-work and non-formal learning by awarding the Youthpass certificate to each youth worker that successfully completed the STEER training seminars, pilot actions, and assessment.The STEER Consortium was constituted on the basis of: a) the priorities addressed, b) the partners’ expertise and experience, and c) the effectiveness of transnationality. Thus, the partnership was made up of 6 partners from 6 countries encountering different situations regarding youth work, youth unemployment, and NEETs in their respective national contexts. At the same time, all partners had previous experience in the project-related areas, such as youth work, training NEETs, initiatives strengthening youth employability, Youthpass framework, developing technologies and ICT tools for learning, mainstreaming, evaluation, and dissemination.The implementation of the STEER project was an important step towards building a pattern of professionalising youth work in comprehensive education to employment transition planning of NEETs and young unemployed, especially in the countries and regions with the highest corresponding rates. STEER project established synergies and bridges between local and national youth organisations, PES, Youth Guarantee actors, HR companies, and employers who benefited the most out of this dynamic and multiplied its effect at the local, regional, national, European levels. The long-term impact of the STEER project would be the contribution in decreasing youth unemployment and NEETs rates at all levels EU wide, thus coming closer to the EU2020 targets. The STEER project’s overall structure as well as its activities and outputs were targeted and will continue to be targeted to that end."

The tourism sector is undergoing profound changes throughout Europe, as we are living in the Project, Digital, Creative, Entrepreneurial and Green Economy era, thus applying a holistic approach to sustainable tourism development is crucial.HyPro4ST alliance seeks to bring positive social and sustainable impact to tourism sector and is built around the idea that collaborative, transnational activities offer opportunities for boosting innovation and progress by pooling resources and the deep knowledge of markets required in a fast-changing world.It aims to develop a new job “Sustainable and Hybrid Project Manager” profile for the Sustainable Tourism Sector, upskill professionals in sustainable, hybrid, digital, creative and entrepreneurship project management, helping alleviate the job losses, inequalities, and other risks, and to build a talent pipeline that tourism sector can mine for future growth. It also proposes the upscaling of VET and higher education trainers’ skills, to be able to adapt to the tourism labour market needs. HyPro4ST develops a joint training programme, HyPro4ST VOOC, in accordance with the ECVET/EQF/EQAVET and Micro-credential approach, the HyPro4ST Practical Guide for trainers, a certification scheme for the new profile and the HyPro4ST Virtual Learning Hub. Through 6 Seminars, 6 online courses, 2 work-based learning activities and the transnational mobility, will enhance the competences of 700 professionals, tackling skills mismatches and supporting the formation of an effective higher and vocational education system for the sustainable tourism sector. This multi-stakeholder partnership, comprising of 17 partners from 6 European countries, develops all the outputs in 7 EU languages, ensuring their cross-border transferability. Furthermore, it assures the long-lasting effect of the project results by elaborating Policy Recommendations, able to inform the policy agendas at national and EU level.

<< Background >>The tourism sector has a significant and increasing role in the EU economic performance. Along with its strengthening, some new directions appeared recently. In parallel with the growing role of short domestic travels, offbeat destinations became more important against mass tourism ones. The highlighted tendencies raise the need of new approaches. The first one of these is the community-based ecotourism.In the existing agendas, regional tourism is mostly connected to individual attractions, while the growing need on community-based tourism has less attention. Even if it is a core element of local population retention and welfare, the complex development of the community through tourism – over some valuable initiatives - is out of the tourism development initiatives. Community-based ecotourism should emphasize the development of local communities and allow for residents to have substantial control over, and involvement in, its development and management, and a major proportion of the benefits should remain within the community. Community-based ecotourism should foster sustainable use and collective responsibility, but it also should embrace individual initiatives within the community. Additionally, it is essential that approaches to community-based ecotourism projects are a part of a larger community development strategy and carefully planned with community members. The second one is the role of the new regional destinations.Among the wide range of tourism destinations, offbeat ones – mostly in hidden rural areas – have increasing role in European countries (European Agenda for Tourism 2050). Their growing importance directly relates to the breakthrough of regional tourism against long distance one. The offbeat destinations give the opportunity of different tourism types, like agrotourism, ecotourism, geotourism, rural tourism, responsible tourism as well as special interest tourism. All of them are good ground for helping local communities and the environment, while supporting climate neutral tourism.Even though regional community-based tourism (with offbeat destinations) is indicated in EU and territorial strategies as an efficient driver of tourism industry, its development following a greener and more digital approach is not a standard component of the related agendas. Additionally, while circular economy has central focus in local economic development, the circular tourism approach is rarely used. Finally, regional tourism is mostly run by family or micro businesses on the hosts’ and suppliers’ side. They are well experienced in their traditional tourism business, however, need further skills and competences on the acceleration of their services through the approach of community-based circular tourism.As of the preliminary territorial analysis made during preparation phase of the project, tourism hosts, operators, and suppliers (as learners) as well as their supporting organizations (as educators) have no competences and skills to adapt circular tourism principle to address community-based development. The combination of missing competences is currently not part of the adult education curricula and need the integration of new learning elements and methodologies. The partnership decided to join its forces to offer a a valuable solution to increase competences of tourism staff to successfully face these challanges.<< Objectives >>Following the given needs, RE-CONNECT has identified a clear need to accelerate the competence and skill development of community-based tourism in offbeat destinations by implementing a greener and more digital development approach to assure more sustainable tourism along circular tourism approach. The solution offered by RE-CONNECT is to address the given needs and challenges by developing and implementing a toolkit on competence and behaviour development on circular tourism for local communities. Especially tourism labour force at operators, local SMEs, NGOs, suppliers, and local government, as well as tourists are planned to be involved. •Being in line with the priorities of environmental sustainability and climate goals as well as digital transformations, the project aims to increase the competences of local tourism communities on greener and more digital tourism products and services by:•Developing a viable interregional digital ecosystem of local tourism communities along circular tourism.•Increasing the readiness and competences of tourism labour force on climate neutral tourism at offbeat destinations.•Developing a knowledge base to accelerate to co-create new innovative products and services<< Implementation >>RE-CONNECT partnership is going to implement the following activities:1. Development of a circular tourism collaborative HUB - a platform for climate neutral tourism solutions, cooperation and knowledge sharing. The HUB is dedicated to local tourism staff (hosts, suppliers, operators) to share their experience, challenges and best working practices within a common network. The interactive hub will provide an online environment where tourism and tourism development staff could meet, seek guidance, exchange knowledge and share ideas, concerns and valuable information related to circular tourism development. The online hub will form an integral part of the much-needed online basis for a strong and supportive regional tourism community and network.2. Competence development for greener and more digital tourism. As one of the core project result, by adapting the elements of the existing training programmes of the project partners, a circular tourism training curriculum of offbeat destinations will be developed and tested. From the content related perspective, the training development and implementation will focus on the following topics: Sustainable tourism offers, Selection, planning and booking through a sustainable process, Green transport, Sustainable stay and services (green & safe accommodation, local consumption, waste sorting), Circular tourism development opportunities (stressing on digital solutions). 3. Co-creation pack development on circular tourism. A knowledge pack (guidebook) will be developed on how to accelerate circular tourism projects, products or services through co-creation. All stages of co-creation will be covered with the final goal to offer better tourism services in the involved areas. The co-creation pack will be also tested (through the collaborative hub) and 3 interregional product/service development projects will be qualified.4. Over the main project results, a set of trainings, as well collaborative, learning by doing competnece development activities will be implemented, with extensive involvment of all stakeholders of the tourism ecosystem of offbeat destination.<< Results >>The main result of the project will be 1) dissemination of climate neutral tourism in offbeat destinations; 2) acceleration of the economic potential of rural areas; 3) spreading of green and digital solutions in less favoured areas; 4) significant competence development of the target group.The expected main results are:•Set of digital tools (hub, training curriculum, co-creation pack) on climate neutral tourism products and services•Developed interregional network along circular tourism•3 interregional co-creation-based competence development projects implemented on a learning by doing base and certified with the quality certificate•Learning interactions through staff exchange (within bootcamps for at least 5 participants form each partner regions)•200+ regional tourism hosts, suppliers, service providers trained from 10 countriesBesides this, some more results are created: - In all participating countries the development and the implementation will be carried out to test all PRs outputs. - Each partner will organize one multiplier event. The goal is to promote the developed competence and skill development tools to different target groups, the project's outputs and results achieved as well as importance of promoting and boosting circular tourism at offbeat destinations. - The results under dissemination activity are: dissemination plan, visualization and promotion materials, project website, social media pages and 4 e-newsletters. Additionally, RE-CONNECT partnership will attend to 6 external events/fairs to promote project results.

<< Background >>Our elder citizens have faced in the last year one of the hardest situations they could face. Many of them were isolated at home, but with no tools to engage with the outer world. While younger generations faced the restrictions with creativity. They created videos, songs, danced… and they shared it with their peers, their friends and families. Elder citizens do not have that opportunity. They do not have the skills to create and interact with others online. According to Eurostat - Community survey on ICT usage in Households there´s an essential need for digital education and training especially in our partner countries as most of them have a lower capacity than the European average. The priority of the partners is to establish a quality life of eldery and improve their lives in the home environment. The age structure of the population has been changing and society is becoming long-lived. Life expectancy has been increasing and the share of over 65-year-olds has been growing rapidly. This fact requires existing systems and arrangements to be adapted to leverage the capabilities of the altered age structure. Partners' goal is to create possibilities and opportunities for quality living for all generations, and for dignified ageing. We can already see that adjustments in many areas are required. Also, in the field of participation in society, focusing on intergenerational cooperation, volunteering, use of ICT in communication, etc. Some partners provide trainings for seniors and aim at raising awareness among them about the importance of ICT solutions for their social inclusion and for cognitive training. They are all involved in intergenerational activities bringing together disadvantaged groups, such as seniors, migrants and younger people with few opportunities, to promote social cohesion and solidarity. Digital generation project is perfectly in line with their needs and objectives and will bring an added value to partner's activities on national level and inspirations.<< Objectives >>This project was born as an opportunity to empower our elder citizens by training them to acquire the skills to be creative on the web and to interact with their peers. But we do believe that the best ones to do so are the younger generations. They use online creativity as a way of communicating. Spending an hour on Tiktok any adult can realize the creative potential and ability of the younger generations.This project will therefore generate the tools needed for young people to be able to train the elderly population on how they can be creative, express themselves, share their knowledge and interact with their peers in an online environment.Objectives: -To research the situation of isolation of elder citizens in the partner countries and collect examples of good practices of creative and digital activities.-To research and collect on intergenerational good practices in the partner countries.-To research and collect the digital tools that can be used for creative expression.-To create a training and mentoring methodology that is based in intergenerational training to support the creative process of elder citizens in the digital context.-To promote the social inclusion and good mental health of elder citizens.-To disseminate the project results beyond the partnership.-To create new synergies between adult education organisations and youth work organisations to promote intergenerational learning.-To promote the use of creativity amongst the elderly.-To promote active ageing.-To give guidelines for other municipalities and key organisations to implement such a programme at their local, regional or national level.<< Implementation >>WP0 - Management and coordination-A0: Management activities-A5: Activity and financial reports-A8: Management meetingsWP1 - Quality and Evaluation-A3: Quality Plan-A6 & A7: Quality reportsWP2 - Dissemination and Exploitation-A1: Dissemination plan-A2: Dissemination materials-A4: Dissemination reports-A9: Dissemination activitiesWP3 - State of the art research & good practices collection (R1)WP4 - Digital tools handbook (R2)WP5 - Training and mentoring methodologies (R3 & R4) and Guidelines for other municipalities and interested organizations across Europe.(R5) The pilotings, training activities and Multiplier events will enable us firstly to check the quality and adequacy of the materials. To upskill participants for them to share good practices, to enable intergenerational contact, training and interaction to happen. C1 short term training “Training methodology” The objective of this short-term joint staff training is to train the young people that will implement the training methodology on its use. A subsequent objective is that the young people participating in the event and have acquired the skills from the training, will be able to multiply the training methodology and boost the sustainability of the project.C2 short term training “Mentoring methodology”: This activity will include 3 participants per partner organisation. The participants of this training will be 2 young adults (18-30) who will implement the piloting phase and a person responsible from each organisation of creating the R4. The objective of this short-term joint staff training is to train the young people that will implement the training methodology on its use. A subsequent objective is that the young people participating in the event and have acquired the skills from the training, will be able to multiply the mentoring methodology and boost the sustainability of the project.<< Results >>• A Good Practices (R1), collecting the good practices carried out by and outside the partnership.• A handbook with video tutorials (R2) with a) the competences needed to be creative online; and b) the tools that can be used to achieve this aim, along with the guide on how to use them.• A guidebook with the training methodology developed that can be followed by young people to teach the elders how to use that tool (R3). This guidebook will be piloted in all countries, that will select at least 2 young people and 2 people over the age of 65 to test the guidebook.• A guidebook with the mentoring methodology on how to accompany an elder person to create artistic digital products and how to share them online (R4). This result will be piloted as well.• Guideline for other municipalities and interested organizations across Europe. (R5)

SEEDs among NEETs was implemented as a strategic partnership for exchanging of good practices. It was a result of the needs of youth workers and organizations in the rural areas of 6 European countries to combat the NEETs phenomenon (BG, LV, MT, PT, RO, SI). The worst NEETs situation in Europe and within this partnership was and still is in Bulgaria where the total percentage is much higher - 26.1, followed by Romania. At the same time unemployment rates of youth aged 15-24 in the EU rural areas is 22%, in Bulgaria it goes to 30.9%, in Portugal to 28.3%. Taking into consideration these figures the partners within SEEDs among NEETs made efforts to achieve the following objectives: 1) increased capacity of rural youth workers to support NEETs and get them involved in local community life, the training system and/or the labour market; 2) improved non-formal learning opportunities for 14 people active in youth work in rural areas; 3) improved quality in the youth work of the participating organizations and their communities. About 650 representatives of the targets benefited from the project activities. Youth organizations and workers, public authorities, schools and school psychologists, local organizations engaged with young people, NGOs, local development agencies, parents and relatives of NEETs and youth volunteers in the rural areas got involved in the promotion and dissemination events, study visits, surveys, inter-institutional meetings and working sessions, transnational meetings, etc. 14 youth workers took part in a short term joint staff training event which added value to the project as it further provided for non-formal learning opportunities and Youthpass certified skills. While encouraging inter-institutional cooperation and networking, active and full engagement of participants, reflections and self-reflections, critical thinking and comparison, the partnership created the following deliverables: comparative analyses on the challenges to approach NEETs, an open web space of good practices and a set of projects helping NEETs become successful. All partners developed their own strategic plans for local inter-institutional cooperation to enhance inclusion of NEETs in community life or in the job market. Throughout the project the partnership acted as a model example of a cross-sector and inter-institutional approach to NEETs as it included youth NGOs and non-formal training providers, a development agency and local authority, a group of schools providing VET and entrepreneurship trainings to students and adults, a professional association representing businesses. As a result of the project, similar local networks designed strategic community plans to prevent and combat the NEETs phenomenon. These, along with partner action plans, will provide for the project sustainability and long-term effect upon the organizations and participants involved and indirectly upon local NEETs and communities. Furthermore, they enhanced and will synergies between sectors and institutions.