Digital devices are intruding into every sphere of our lives because we are constantly using them at home, work, school, on vacation. Some young would be more inclined to give up food or sleep rather than stop using mobile devices. Young aged 16-24, report spending 44% of their daily time online on a mobile device and 25-34 year-olds say they spend around 39% of their time online on a mobile device(source: GlobalWEbindex). Young people participated more on social networking sites than the population as a whole-the average in EU-28 -36 %, but in Greece and the Czech Republic-45 %. The average time spent online during the week is 2-3h per day.The proportion of daily usersamong internet users averaged 78 % in Poland and in the Czech Republic (Eurostat). Poland,, Greece, the Czech Republic all recorded rates for the daily use of computers young people that were at least 25% points higher than for the whole population (eurostat). We started a dialogue with our international partners and youth workers, youth organization, youth and showing the immense problem of Internet addiction and promoted methods that help young people to create a conscious and balanced life, both online and offline. We didn’t deny the value that technology brings to education that undoubtedly brings creativity and entertainment to people. Our goal was to takeaction that equip youth workers with tools which allow engage young people to spend time out of the virtual world. With the cooperation of local NGOs, educational institutions and partners, we educated young people on the negative side of spending every free moment on the phone. The project focused on methods to promote the benefits of logout by using video campaign (on national and transnational level). We created the campaign which is related to this social problem.During the project we showed the scale of addiction by cooperating with young people during preparation of video campaign.We asked young people in 4 countries to share their views on digital devices, the frequency of its usage and its side effects. We encouraged young people to use apps that affect their development and knowledge, and how to achieve the balance between online and offline life. We showed them such possibilities by giving them chance to participate in 2-days workshops.And by giving them meterials which were created during the project duration including brochure for youth. In the brochure we included information about symptoms of overusing digital devices and we showed ways to limit the problem.We presented the tools with easy access for youth which are helpful for them to keep the balance between online and offline life, to increase their awareness on the topic and to decrease the time spent online. We aimed to be partners for youth in eliminating such addiction.As young people we want to act and not waste valuable time.The main aim of the project was tomake young people aware of the bad impact of over-use of new technologies every day.As our main tools used for promoting the knowledge on the topic of Internet addiction were social media–Fb and Youtube,due to the fact that those are the most popular channels visited by the target group of our project.In this way we ensured to reach the target group in wide scope.Moreover we reached not just youth, but also people who work with youth and who can spread the knowledge for youth by educating them also after project duration. We created “Take a Digital Break” program including manual for trainers, scenarios of the workshops,excercises and script for lesson to be used by youth workers. In this way we took care of preventing digital addiction. We based on collecting facts, running campaigns to get everyone off their screens and hosting retreats, events and workshops. Target group: young people – main group for our activities.Youth are the most at risk of being a victim of addiction because of being vulnerable&inexperienced in social life. Youth workers – this group was also involved in our project. We created the tools including methods that allow them to work with young and engage youth to create a balanced life.The youth workers and educators can help to solve this problem and support teenagers but they must be adequately prepared to such a specific topic.The project is transnational as internet has no borders. It must besolved at international level.The goal of our transnational partnerships was to achieve more than individual organizations can achieve on their own. We paid attention to the quality of training and innovative learning methods.Workshops that were important part of our project helped youth to limit their addiction and youthworkers/educators to work with youth on that topic.By developing methods and increasing the competence of youth workers, we influenced the awareness of parents, young people, careers, schools who often do not cope with the problem of Internet addiction and do not know how to reduce the use of the internet and mobile devices.

"The project ""Connected by heARTs"" is a Strategic Partnership for Innovation, with a duration of 16 months , implemented by a consortium with 4 partners coming from 3 countries: N. Macedonia, Spain and Greece.The main aim of the project is to develop a virtual training methodology for youth workers on how to join together and involve young people with and without disabilities in the creation of attractive, creative, and cultural activities, in order to help them on their integration path and overcoming prejudices and discriminatory attitudes of community members.Nowadays, with improving technology and digitalization of life, also due to the current global state caused by pandemic Covid 19, it is clear that people can be present in the community without being actually physically socially included. Through internet services and social media, people are easily engaging in conversations and debates and various virtual activities. As it is know being socially included people are happier, fulfilled, and optimistic about happenings in their life. With positive emotions and a positive mental state, they are by default healthier, because their immune system is functioning better. In fact, social inclusion is an important ""determinant of health""- without inclusion, people are more likely to experience negative feelings, such as the feeling of abandonment, loneliness, isolation, and low self-esteem, where in many cases can lead to depression. Unfortunately, for many people with disabilities life is lonely, filled with unnecessarily negative emotions that are infused by society and their surroundings. They may not have a “sense of presence” in the community and may not have access to activities they prefer or desire to explore. People lack opportunities to work, play, create, learn, and develop social relationships with others (particularly with people who do not have a disability). People with disabilities are often not acknowledged in the community, or if they are, it may be in a negative way.These are just a few of the reasons why we want to unite experts, youth workers, cultural organizations, and institutions that work, support, and take care of young people with disabilities, with young people with and without disabilities, in an innovative project that will give them an opportunity to work in an engaging environment, grow and create together, were beside youth workers and organizations, we will include half youngsters with disabilities and a half without. We aim to contribute to personal growth and to resolve/ improve the situation of young people with fewer opportunities, through the development of the guide, whereby using artistic activities young people with and without disabilities will be empowered, by cultivating artistic and social skills, non-discrimination and tolerance. This project is based on the active participation of each person involved, both experts, youth workers, cultural organizations and institutions as well youth with and without disabilities, and this will be ensured through constant monitoring and observation, giving specific tasks to everyone, encourage each person to express verbal or emotional. The possibility for proper engagement in the foreseen activities of the youth with special needs will be supported by the involvement of an accompanying psycho-pedagogic specialist/youth worker experienced in the work with young people with special needs on each learning/teaching/training activity which will also play the role of the translator by facilitation communication between the youth.The project's intellectual Output is going to be a virtual training methodology guide, coming from extensive and detailed research and analysis of the target audience, and will be tailor-made specifically to its needs. The digital guide will be descriptive, explanatory, engaging, and interactive- through which young people with and without disabilities will be able to improve personally and professionally, by the mean of the youth workers support, elevate their knowledge and understanding of them-self and each other, beneficial to improve mutual collaboration and mutually progress towards more stable and empowered future. The guide will be different from traditional approaches to this topic, due to its powerful and symbolic state- of- the- art concept.The digital guide for virtual training, which will be created, will be an open educational resource, both available in a video training course available as a proposal from the promoting organizations, as well as it will be available as a design publication containing relevant information for using it and for replication and adaptation by other organizations, trainers, mentors or youth workers involved in such context and experienced, interested to train their members, volunteers and to better prepare their personnel in working with the young people with disabilities"

The 21st-century challenges – globalization, information overload, rapid changes, virtualization – leads to more and more requirements for learners and educators. The skills that learners need to contribute effectively to society are in constant change. Professional development, at all points in a teacher‘s career, is necessary to keep up with changing research, tools, practices. Most institutions and training organizations look much the same today as they did a generation ago, and educators/trainers themselves are often not developing the practices and skills necessary to meet the diverse needs of today’s learners. They see the necessity to enter the e-learning market and change their profile but they are often afraid of such change -especially mature educators- or the training available do not offer the clear move to e-learning with a simple explanation, good tasks, examples, exercises and comprehensive for trainers knowledge necessary for DL. The project is the response to the lack of programs that offer new skills to the trainers/educators/mentors who work in a traditional way and would like to acquire new skills connected with e-learning and DL. The trainers/educators/mentors with experience usually are afraid of entering new areas and using new tools that require IT knowledge. The outbreak of the coronavirus has shown to the world how important competencies that allow teachers to conduct classes online. The closing of thousands of educational institutions has opened up many opportunities in the implementation of online education, on the other hand, it excluded those working only with traditional methods.The problems of online education and staff skills are particularly important. Poland, Lithuania, Greece and Romania lack experienced trainers who can smoothly pass from traditional teaching to DL (e-learning). The ratio of educators who can be at the same time mentors and trainers is very low and it is about 11% (Lithuania), 14% (Poland), 15% (Greece), 14% in Romania compared to the European average (EU 27) of 32% (Istat, 2016). There is a very poor stat. data referring to trainers' and educators' qualifications and specializations as there are no such registers at the national or regional level. It is connected with the fact that a part of trainers and educators are freelancers or work in education besides doing professionally sth else.Main aims:• Enhancing the quality training of trainers/educators/mentors in DL• Exchange of best practices of partners org in DL• Fostering the provision&assessment of trainers’ key-competences: DL and e-learning training abilities&digital skills which are included in curricula• Introducing, developing&promoting innovative methods&tools in training by supporting personalized learning approaches for trainers/educators/mentors, teaching them ICT in an accessible way offering OERvia platform, open&flexible learning, virtual mobility by introducing an e-learning platform open to all trainers• Promoting cross-border cooperation in education&learning via e-learning as all partners will work on DL and e-learning• Enhancing the professional development of persons working/active in education by offering them new competencies&ability to work on-line by changing their profile • Increasing quality&range of training, ICT-based methodologies&use of OER– by introducing new methods, tools, e-learning, personalized teachingThe project reached the mature people who are trainers/educators/mentors who used to work in a traditional way and wanted to acquire new skills connected with e-learning. Over 300 people participated directly in our events (2x dissemination events in each country, and 4 DE instead of the conference in Poland, one pilot training course in each country). Indirectly, with the help of dissemination tools, we reached approximately 3,000 people presenting our activities. By publishing products on the E+ platform, we expect to reach more people.During the project, a platform was created that included instructional videos, transcripts, quizzes, visual materials, and manuals on how to switch from traditional to online teaching. The project also created a handbook presenting how and how to teach trainers and educators new digital skills.During the project, people had the opportunity to work with new online tools and learn to use in everyday work. This knowledge will be transferred to the oasis used in class. Project recipients were both interested in switching to online teaching and creating classes that combine traditional methods and the virtual work of learners.As a result of the project, the participants acquired new ITC competencies and learned how to train others with similar tools. Our materials are available under free licenses, so anyone can use them in the future.

The project named Experiential Pedagogy Of The Oppressed For Adults, run between 31/12/2017 and 30/12/2019 within the partnership of NGO’s from five countries (Turkey, Italy, Greece, Bulgaria and N. Macedonia) aimed to develop the capacities of the partner organizations and their adult educators, to improve the quality of learning programmes, tools, and methodologies by transnational cooperation and using innovative and persisting perfection in adult learning opportunities. Applying innovative and qualified ways to develop and improve their teaching skills helped the NGO workers and social workers to cope with difficulties in refugees’ educational issues better.Project started by running a transnational research to see the current situation of adult education in refugee context in Turkey, Italy, Greece, Bulgaria and N. Macedonia. The research has been gathered in a report which was one of the intellectual outputs of the project.According to the findings of the research, a tailored, unique education program was developed for adult educators and implemented through two LLT activities which provided the adult educators a long-term training for trainers experience.During the first LLT activity in Turkey up-to-date works of David Kolb on experiential learning theory and on practical synthesis of Experiential Learning Theory and Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed were delivered to the adult educators.Then these educators run training programs in their locals and practices experiential learning and pedagogy of the oppressed methodology.The second LLT program in North Macedonia aimed to extract new learning outputs from the local implementations of the adult educators by evaluating their practices, opening a peer learning space for enhancing the new learning and sharing the up-to-date developments of experiential learning theory.All the content developed, delivered and re-produced during the project was gathered in a Trainers’ Guide which was the second intellectual output of the project.Lastly all these outputs and outcomes were shared with stakeholders in the field of civil society, adult education and humanitarian works in all five countries via national multiplying events.

According to Turkish Statistical Institute; • In Turkey, the population rate of the disabled individuals is 13,45 %, and 14,59 % in Marmara region, where our city is located. • In Turkey 61,8 % of disabled population is 23 years and older. • 41,6 % of disabled individuals are illiterate. • 96,69% of them are hopeless about educational oppotunities for them. • 25,6 of them expects increase in educational opportunities. Thus, we aimed to create educational opportunities for adults with disabilities by means of our project. There are 2780 special needs students identified in our institution, 871 of them are adults. The target group of the project was disabled adults. As an institution we place disabled adults to different adult education courses specialized for them like ceramic, athletics, music, voice training, knitting, jewelry design, folk dance, and plain weave. Disabled adults attended courses with the aim of gaining knowledge, improving their manipulative skills or acquiring a profession. At this point placing them to the most appropriate course is very important because the courses will prepare them for life and at one point the courses determine the quality of their lives and their families' lives. Therefore, with this project we aimed to develop an assessment tool to place disabled adults to the most appropriate course by taking into consideration their needs, interests and talents. With this tool, disabled adults have discovered their interests and talents, their self awareness,self efficacy and self confidence have increased and as a result, they have been more content with their lives All the partners of the project are institutions dealing with disabled adults. SC Psihoforworld from Romania develops cooperation and communication activities for young people with disabilities and they implement sports activities, playful activities, theater and art therapy and they contribute to the development of friendship, communication and cooperation relations between young people with disabilities and young people without deficiencies. IIAPHS from Italy includes experts in psychology and social sciences: social psychology, psychometrics. They have expertise about competencies models. Association for Education and Development of Disabled People from Greece aims to provide disabled with skills so as to ensure employment. The association supports disable by offering advisory and psychological support to trainees and their families, socialization and education circulation programmes, pedagogical programmes, computer and accounting courses etc. ARDA from Germany offers courses in a wide range of fields such as management, job security, disabled care and the education of people with disabilities, food preparation etc. They have successfully completed more than 50 projects consisting of a wide range of the fields including the education of people with disabilities and inclusive education. There were 4 transational meetings during the project. The target of these meetings were to coordinate the process of the application of the assessment tool. There were 5 learning and training activities with 20 psychological counselors, special needs teachers and special needs specialists from 5 participant countries. In these meetings, we made workshops to develop the assessment tool, attain trainings to learn how to develop an assessment tool, and make observations in special needs institutions. Within the scope of our project, an international measurement tool has been developed that enable disabled adults in 5 countries to discover their interests and talents. Validity and reliability studies of the measurement tool have been conducted in English, Turkish, Romanian, Greek, Italian and German languages. In Turkey, Germany, Italy, Greece and Romania, a total of 741 disabled adults have discovered their talent areas. According to the results of the assessmen tool, 741 adults with disabilities were directed and placed in public education courses and vocational courses in line with their abilities. Disabled adults who have discovered their talents have successfully completed these courses in fields such as sports, painting, photography, gardening, theater, music, dance, handicrafts, cooking and computers. As a result of the post tests, it has been determined that there is an increase in life satisfaction of disabled adults. Disabled adults, who exist in social and productive life with their abilities have started to get more satisfaction from life. The assessment tool has been named as “Disabled Adults Talent and Interest Identificatıon Tool”. This measurement tool can be used when recommending vocational courses for disabled adults or when directing them to courses for hobby or educational purposes. Measurement tool consists of the excel file which has automatic calculation feature, a video and manual explaining how the measurement tool is applied and evaluated.