A tunnel is one of the most complex building in construction and maintenance. Generally, they are used to ease transit and reduce travel times. The available safety concepts are shared according to national frameworks between firefighters, technical relief organizations and armed. They is no common concept in firefighting in tunnels between these organisations and between the European members states. Professional exchange should be mandatory but it is spare and unstructured. SAFEINTUNNELS will close a knowledge and action gap for firefighters and victims by:• Firstly, firefighting in tunnels are highly customized strategies reflecting local and/or regional conditions (place, type and age of tunnel, rescue scheme applied etc.) on the one hand, but on the other hand, it has common nominators that can and should be shared. EU-Platforms for this purpose are neither available nor established – difficult to believe.• Secondly, for firefighting in tunnels the technical devices are often derivations of other complex devices in firefighting; their range of applications are extremely broad and will increase even further with the Trans-European transport network and the growing urbanization across Europe– e.g. the reciprocal dependence of tunnels and bridges orchestrating the different types of traffic through the Alps.• Thirdly, devices for firefighting in tunnels are designed to rescue the affected people and safeguard firefighters in this special state of emergencies, under substantial time constraints and in situations with unknown or unforeseen variables. Therefore, the firefighters usually use the most expensive devices in the fleet of vehicles and rescue trains for firefighting (most of which are funded by taxpayers).The scheme will be further developed to allow vocational training and education of Vet teachers and comply with the ECVET-standard. It shall be applicable and adaptable to all tunnels in use independent of the year of construction.

"<< Background >>The COVID-19 pandemic and its measures to prevent further spreading of the virus had and have a massive impact on counselling in career guidance, on the respective institutions as well as on counsellors and counselees across Europe. They have been forced to convert their mostly face-to-face services to a digital setting quasi overnight. Unfortunately, online career guidance was not integrated as a natural part in the range of services before the crisis. Reasons were manifold, e.g. lack of technical equipment, lack of digital literacy, lack of appropriate data protection or worries to violate them, etc. After being more than a year in emergency procedures, the necessity of its application has considerably changed. Standard tools made their way into the counselling but missing an integrated and demand-orientated career counselling profile. Nonetheless, institutions and individuals collected some positive experiences in mostly unstructured and unguided circumstances through a more flexible service design in distance career guidance. Now, institutions and individuals look for guidance, appropriate tools and structured vocational education and training providing transparency and transferability in application for a hybrid career counselling concept. This fact was confirmed in all project countries in research conversations e.g. with the deputy management of the Public Employment Service Tyrol and with the German Association for Educational and Vocational Guidance. Moreover, at the conference ""VET Internationalisation in 2021: beyond mobilities"", keynote speaker João Santos, DG Employment, Social Affairs, and Inclusion from the European Commission said: “Career counsellors play a critical role for skills development to support the green and digital transitions. Change is happening at such a pace that people have difficulties targeting future skills and capacities. Here, career counsellors can provide […] guidance and opportunities for quality qualifications, as well as […] information on upskilling and reskilling.” Now, the pandemic is slowly passing, and a simple return to former face-to-face approaches is not an answer to the outlined demand (CEDEFOP Report: Career guidance policy and practice in the pandemic, 2020; OECD Report: Career Guidance for Adults in a Changing World of Work, 2021). Therefore, it is the time to structurally integrate last year’s experiences and take career guidance to the next level: an umbrella strategy to upskill digital skills on processes and tools is needed. OCCAY should be this right measure at the right time. Otherwise, there is a risk that the online format will be again the responsibility of the individual counsellor and/or single future-orientated institution – the knowledge opportunity and openness for a such a comprehensive strategy would be lost. Facing the variety of challenges, OCCAY attempts therefore to be an inclusive and modular offer at the same time:(A) It serves VET institutions providing a tailor-made benchmark system to assess the digital literacy of their counsellors and integrating the digital literacy enhancement strategically within the quality management by a guideline recommendation for a local, regional, national, or even European harmonization.(B) It serves the individual counsellor by offering with the OCCAY Hybrid Course a demand-orientated tool based on ECVET for European transferability and knowledge transfer and with the OCCAY Platform for Online Career Guidance an innovative all-in-one counselling tool.(C) All this is encircled with a policy recommendation targeting decision-makers in institutions/organization, public administration, and politics dealing with career guidance to support dissemination, openness, and integration of OCCAY.In addition, OCCAY aims to support with its output the Digital Education Action Plan 2021-2027. Because it is coherent with both strategic priorities (fostering digital education ecosystem/enhancing digital skills and comptences).<< Objectives >>OCCAY chooses the approach of an umbrella strategy with the targeted activities and their objectives to transform the overall goal of educational counselling and career guidance in Europe. For this reason, the OCCAY's goals coincide with the Digital Education Action Plan of the European Commission, as OCCAY will be (1) an inclusive and modular instrument with its learnings from the Covid-19 pandemic and (2) make one education and training fit for the digital age. OCCAY starts with the development of a self-assessment grid. It should provide educational and vocational counsellors as well as institutions with an easy-to-use and practical tool to assess their digital competences for their counselling activity. This first step of the inventory enables the next step in the OCCAY Hybrid Flexi Course to learn those contents and skills that the counsellors still lacks: In parallel, the OCCAY Platform for Online Career Guidance combines the necessary areas (communication, information, work tools, counselling tools) of educational and career guidance in order to be able to offer them in the online setting in a high-quality, data-safe and professional way on one digital platform. This not only makes counselling more efficient, but also enables much better cooperation with clients and allows applications closer to their individual needs. With the development of a strategy manual, for the first time, institutions are also provided with practice-related material to integrate knowledge transfer into their organisation on the one hand and to anchor digitalization at all their levels on the other. Due to the structural integration into the overall process of the participating institutions and by integrating ECVET into the OCCAY Hybrid Flexi Course, a sustainable and long-term effect of OCCAY can be expected. In addition, the project promotes European networking in every activity, which will structurally be supported by a policy recommendation targeting decision-makers in public administration and political level. With this clear positioning, the most important areas are covered and addressed to decision-makers at EU (in Brussels) and EU agency level (e.g. CEDEFOP). This will allow – for the first time – a European common and transferable understanding within the vocational education of career counsellors as well as a European quality assurance because the entrance requirements and educational profile to pursue a career as a counsellor are manifold and differ between all member states. Therefore, OCCAY is also a starting point to stop national proliferation of standards, procedures, methods and tools by offering a common digital platform for mutual education and training.<< Implementation >>With its multi-level approach, OCCAY will involve different target groups in its project activities. The cornerstone for a successful implementation of OCCAY is a coherent and comprehensive needs assessment based on a qualitative and quantitative empirical approach. It starts with a self-assessment grid at project start: Targeting at least 300 career counsellors, the tool will deliver a finetuned picture of counsellor’s digital skills. Together with the implementation of focus groups a report will be compiled, and the results will serve as the basis for the development the basic OCCAY Hybrid Flexi Course as well as the OCCAY Platform for Online Career Guidance. Then, the OCCAY Hybrid Flexi Course will be piloted and practically tested with at least 30 career counsellors in each country recruited from the project organizations. Based on this, the OCCAY Platform for Online Career Guidance will be further developed to correspond with the demand of the stakeholders. This result will be again tested by 20 career counsellors recruited from the project organizations, who will use it with their clients during the consulting process over a period of four weeks. Furthermore, on an institutional level, 96 managers and directors of vocational and educational institutions will participate in focus groups to discuss the strategy handbook and the framework for organizations (2x2 focus groups, 6 person each per country). This aims to actively involve them as decision-makers integrating online career guidance in their institutions and promoting it to policymakers and public administration at all levels. This distribution process will be further addressed by the result “policy recommendation” to promote our common approach of OCCAY at these levels strategically. Therefore, round tables will be implemented with at least 12 European and national politicians as well as at least 12 policy makers in order to address the recommendations to decision-makers.<< Results >>The expected results will be in line with the Digital Education Action Plan 2021-2027 priorities: strengthening the digital literacy among career counsellors and providing a tailormade digital platform for online career guidance to institutions and users. Furthermore, OCCAY will counteract barriers to use online career guidance by addressing all relevant levels in institutions and in administration. These levels are manifold and differ from member state to member state. Therefore, we focus at member state-level according to the national implementation. At EU-level, we attempt to speak to officials from the EU Commission as well as to EU-parliamentarians to raise awareness (the EU mostly gives recommendations in this policy field). It is expected to build a goal-orientated network through Europe, which lasts also after its completion as it ties together the core mission of educational and vocational career guidance: providing an excellent service with an inclusive and modular offer. All results of OCCAY go clearly beyond awareness raising interventions at national level because the project addresses the core problems of digital readiness in education and develops tailored solutions with its opensource offer. Therefore, the priority was chosen because OCCAY can be a door opener in a national dominated field to leverage the vocational education and training of career counsellors onto a European level. The impact on an individual level is a significant improvement of digital skills of career counsellors as well as a digital upgrade of the institutions. Thus, an intermediate effect is expected to have a long-term impact in terms of reducing barriers to use digital technical applications and initiate a change in behaviour and handling (intrinsic motivation to gain new digital skills, high level of problem-solving skills, open- mindedness and curiosity, etc.). OCCAY will support institutions and career counsellors shifting from insecurity or even ignorance to demand-orientated know-how at an comprehensive level. It will help to establish a supportive and safe digital working atmosphere in the long-term with a win-win for institutions, counsellors, and counselees. By the involvement of relevant stakeholders including decision-makers at EU-level in particular, the importance of strengthening digital literacy of counsellors will be recognised at political level in coherence with the Digital Education Action Plan of the European Commission. In summary, the partners are convinced about OCCAY’s positive impact on the educational labour market and its contribution to the recovery of the European economy after the Covid-19 crisis."

"<< Background >>Albert Einstein once said ""Intellectuals solve problems, geniuses prevent them"". In the case occupational violence, preventive measures may not eliminate incidents of violent behaviours completely, but they will reduced them considerably and discourage future ones. HORECA is a sector where occupational violence thrives, primarily because it is manned by people with lower formal qualifications or very little training, or come from vulnerable groups of the population such as young people, women with family responsibilities, migrants or members of ethnic minorities. Workplace violence is a health and safety hazard . All hazards require preventive measures in order to minimize the risk of them occurring. It is important therefore for HORECA management to know how to effectively defuse any such threat. In business, all these hazards are identified and described within a Risk Assessment Plan which is a part of a wider Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) management plan. Most OHS plans, although they recognise Occupational Violence as a risk, they often offer superficial remedies that touch the awareness level.HORECA faces chronic labour shortages, and the current levels of workplace violence may demotivate people to seek employment there. Furthermore, workplace violence has a ripple effect on the society, the economy and the quality of life of the Europeans. There is a need for drastic actions to defuse the situation and reverse the current negative labour conditions in the HORECA sector. People working in the HORECA sector are entitled to have safe and healthy working environments. It is time to ""Weed out Occupational Violence from HORECA""!<< Objectives >>Objectives of the project: - Enhance the role of VET in the effective prevention and management of workplace violence in HORECA;- Increase awareness of occupational violence among HORECA management and stakeholders;- Offer HORECA managements training to further develop their Occupational Health and Safety management plans against workplace violence including third party violence;- Foster inclusive, healthy and safe HORECA employment;- Improve the Occupational conditions in the HORECA sector to attract more labour;- Manage the emotional, social and psychological stress of the workplace violence victims;- Contribute to a violence free Tourism and Catering sectors in Europe.<< Implementation >>In order to achieve the above mentioned objectives WEED OUT will implement the following activities:- develop a WEED OUT VET Training course designed to be delivered in a physical, blended or virtual learning environment;- create a board game and its equivalent online version to be used as a learning tool during the WEED OUT course;- design an occupational prevention and management strategy, which constitutes a set of actions leading to the deactivation of the possible instigation sources of violent behaviour in the workplace, to improve the Occupational Health and Safety Plans of HORECA enterprises;- organise a training the VET trainer event which will aim to equipped VET trainers with the additional knowledge and skills to train HORECA managers on the prevention and management of workplace violence;- organise four transnational project meetings to coordinate all other project activities;- six multiplier events with a total of physical participation of 175 members of the target groups and virtual of 120 members, to disseminate the project results and activities of WEED OUT.To successfully implement the above activities, the WEED OUT consortium will also deploy:Project Management activities:- Four transnational project meetings in the Czech Republic, Austria, Greece and Lithuania;- online partnership meetings every 2 months;- bi-annual financial internal reports to manage budget expenditures; - Interim and Final reports to the Czech NAQuality Assurance Monitoring and Evaluation Activities:- Drafting and implementation of a Quality Evaluation Plan- Evaluation of consortium meetings- Gathering and processing feedback from participants of project activities- Monitoring of project indicators and ensuring high quality of project resultsDissemination Activities:- Preparation and implementation of a Dissemination Plan- Development of the WEED OUT project visual identity- Development of a project website and promotional material- Creation of project social media page<< Results >>The WEED OUT consortium expects the following Project Results and Outcomes:- The VET WEED OUT Curriculum- The WEED OUT VET Course- The Workplace Violence Prevention and Management Strategy- The Board and Online Game ""Recognise and Act""- The WEED OUT Project Management Handbook- The WEED OUT Quality Assurance Plan- The WEED OUT Dissemination Strategy Plan- PR1 Pilot Training Activity- The WEED OUT C1 Activity- The WEED OUT project website, social media page and other dissemination material- 6 x Multiplier Events in Greece, Latvia, Austria, Cyprus, Czech Republic, and Lithuania"