The lack of parents’ involvement in their children’s educations is a problem across Europe. Research shows that pupils whose parents take actively part in their educational life do better with regards to education, jobs, health, economy, and leading a life away from criminality (James Heckman & Marco Francesconi 2016, Trygfonden og Børns vilkår). Teachers and pedagogues are key persons, when it comes to engaging the parents in their children’s social and cultural education in school, but they lack useful methods to succeed. Therefore, this project: “Who Conducts the Orchestra? – A shared responsibility of parents and teachers for children’s social and cultural education” will create awareness of parents’ importance in children’s school life and develop concrete methods to improve the current collaboration between teachers, pedagogues and parents.The project targets 25 teachers and pedagogues, who teach pupils in the ages 6- 9 years old. The project particularly targets teachers and pedagogues of young pupils, as they are the first educators who meet the parents, and therefore, they have the possibility of introducing the parents to their responsibilities in regard of their children’s education and establishing a good collaboration from the beginning of the pupils’ school lives.The second target group is the parents of the pupils, whom the project seek to involve more actively in their children’s education. The project will involve 50 parents actively in the test-phase of the methodology. The final beneficiary are the pupils, whom the project endeavours to provide the best condition to enable children to thrive in their social and educational lives. In order to improve the current collaboration between teachers, pedagogues, and parents, the project will: -Conduct four focus-group interviews with the target groups, map the current practices of home-school collaboration, and on the basis of this, identify relevant content for the new methodology (IO1).-Develop the methodology consisting of: i.introduction to four fundamentals in children’s lives: morality, self-control, relations, and environment (Wikström 2016)ii.a communication methodology,iii.training events and multiplier events, iv.and developing a handbook in which participants can seek guidance on how to implement the methodology in practice (IO2).-Develop a platform on which the participating teachers and pedagogues can attune the methodology to their current needs and local contexts. This platform will also serve as the website of the project (IO3). -Conduct an evaluation of the project’s results, focusing on the impact of the project for the target groups, and the products’ quality and timely delivery (IO4). The teachers and pedagogues will be trained in the Methodology on a teacher training event, where after they will implement the methodology in practice during a test-phase. Each country will have a test-group consisting of five teachers and/or pedagogues and 10 parents. They will meet two times to train the methodology, and implement it in their home-school collaboration throughout six months. Furthermore, the project will host two multiplier events in each country, where experts will provide further knowledge about parents’ importance in their children’s school lives to a greater number of pedagogues, teachers, school staff, and parents. The project believes that the “Who Conduct the Orchestra” methodology - and handbook will equip teachers and pedagogues to engage parents in their children’s education in a constructive manner. Thereby, enhance the awareness of the great importance of parents’ attention and engagement in their childen’s education, and ensure a fruitful collaboration between teachers, pedagogues and parents. This will ultimately contribute to the children’s well-being and ability to strive in their social and educational lives. Furthermore, the project will promote cooperation between teachers and pedagogues across Europe, sowing seeds for greater collaboration among educators on this topic. Finally, the project will give educators across Europe free access to the innovative and relevant contents, thereby expanding the range of beneficiaries. Partners, representing a municipality, a university, family councils, and a local organization, who are working actively with children and education in many ways, will carry out the project. The partners are from Turkey, England, Spain, Italy, and Denmark, which cover the East, West, South, and North of Europe.

Context and the background:The employability of migrants in the EU is one of the main concerns when we talk about the Social Inclusion and Integration of people with an immigration background. Learning a new language and understanding cultural differences are the first steps to increasing their employability. The main objective of this project was to create a platform that will provide the necessary language skills and cultural knowledge in three most easily available jobs for immigrants, which are jobs in the service sector (waitress, hotel reception, cleaning), construction sector (construction workers, plumbers and electricians) and health sector (care for elderly, nurses and child care). This project also included the Job Interview part to prepare them for their first job interviews and improve the chances of getting employed.All of these efforts were to help the EU Action Plan on Integration of third-country nationals (2016), which already pointed out that linguistic and cultural barriers in education and on the labour market contribute to the vulnerable position of the migrants and refugees. Objectives: - Support and enhance the learning of trade-specific vocabularies within the sectors of health, service and construction; - Promote digital use in education, and thus enhance individuals levels of digital skills; - Provide VET students with an innovative learning method; and - Equip the users better for the labour market through an increased linguistic, cultural, and digital knowledge level.Participants:Primary target group - unemployed migrants and refugeesSecondary target group - VET teachers and professionals, language schoolsDevelopment of materials:To ensure the relevance of the materials, some partners decided to use their own VET teachers or reach out to VET schools to help them develop the materials.There were 2 teachers from Sprogcenter Vejle, C1- Short-term Joint staff training activity:30 participants were attending this activity in total (including the partners) with relevant background in VET or language learning in general. Testing of the VR and VCC platform:VCC total number of users: 2177 usersExternal VR testers: Dissemination: Final numbers for each period and activity type (online and offline) can be found in the Annexes - Dissemintaiton Report. FB page followers: 336FB page visits: 1.329Estimated coverage rate: 27.928The estimated total amount of users: 26.123 (this rate indicates how much people clicked, shared, liked, or commented on posts on the Facebook page)The total amount of posts: 110The estimated total amount of reached people: 73.261Activities- 5 transnational partner meetings (3 physical, 2 online due to Covid-19)- 2 workshops for partners (IO1- Curriculum and IO2 - Gamification and VR)- 1 teacher training activity (2 days, first day with presentation and knowledge sharing, second day with workshop and peer discussion)- Development of the Curricular framework (IO1)- Technical Development of VCC platform and VR experiences- 5 alpha testings ( internal testing for bug-fixing (making the platform work without problems) in several intervals- 2 different UX testings for each partner (online testing for VCC and physical testing of VR experience)Results:1. Reusable Curricular Framework2. VCC material: 5 languages (Greek, Danish, German, Italian, French) 3 main modules (Health care, Construction, Service) focusing on 3 job positions 8 Lessons in each module containing relevant materials Various mini-tests, mini quizzes and final test3. 3 trade-specific VR environments for practising vocabulary and job functions within specific sectors VR: 10 levels total 3 Health levels (1. Immobile patient care, 2. Patient with Alzheimer, 3. Emergency) 3 Construction levels (1. Bricklaying, 2. Electrician, 3. Plumber) 3 Service levels (1. Receptionist, 2. Guest care, 3. Restaurant) 1 job interview VR-environment for training situation awarenessImpact: -Enhance trade-related language competencies and cultural know-how of migrants and refugees;-Enhance the digital competencies both of the students and the teachers; and -Offer a new methodology for teaching languagePotential longer-term benefits:The project develops a learning platform and a user’s handbook that will remain available 5 years after the project. The project offers a supplementary digital learning material to be used in VET schools in all the European countries after the EU funding period. An effective dissemination plan will secure that the project results will be spread to relevant educational institutions. All of which are available on the project’s website: https://www.work-vr.eu/

Building Social Bridges by Entrepreneurial Thinking: the overall aim of this project is to facilitate and pave the way for sustainable social inclusion among socially marginalized groups through improving their entrepreneurial mindset and competences. In the project we focus on increasing social capital which often goes hand in hand with the increasing of cultural and economic capital. Social capital has commonly been used as a term to characterize the networks that link people together in useful ways (bridging capital) and build reciprocity and social solidarity through shared norms and loyalties (bonding capital). Social capital is a constructive source of participation and community relations; thus it is an important resource for adult learners aiming at better accessing labour market, local communities and social groups.The main beneficiaries of the project are marginalized groups in European societies who are educationally and socially disadvantaged. According to Eurostat (2012) circa 24% of the European population risks poverty or social exclusion. Due to the expertise of the participating organizations the project partnership will concentrate on the work with migrants and refugees on one hand, and with drop-outs of the compulsory school-system as vulnerable sub group on the other hand. During the project lifetime, we expect to include 100 end beneficiaries and 20 role models as active participants directly into the project flow. Major target groups of the project outputs will be teachers and stakeholders in adult learning, and other educational and social sectors.To increase any type of capital, an entrepreneurial mindset and entrepreneurial competences are needed. What is important in the project approach is that we do not work on entrepreneurship with the objective to create small companies, businesses etc. We focus on entrepreneurial thinking as a means to increasing social capital to motivate people to create, or access and develop networks and communities to link people to the external environment beyond the confines of one´s own affinity group. They should become change makers of their life as well as in the community. The main strategy to achieve this goal is to work with role models - preferable role models who have faced challenges comparable to those the learners are facing. Role models will be people who achieved to build social bridges against all the external circumstances and obstacles. Building up an entrepreneurial mindset is including knowledge about ones’ own values and fears. For example, if one does not allow oneself to fail, to take risks, to be active in the planning ones’ own life, it will block the approach to and the motivation to learn and to improve the own situation.The project will result in 3 intellectual outputs:- A review on recent research of good practice in working on the entrepreneurial mindset and competences and of working with role models. - Portraits of role models for entrepreneurial thinking, highlighting why people have had success and have been able to increase their social capital and we will make the findings accessible to the public. These role models will come out of the beneficiary groups of the project. At the end there will be portraits and descriptions of these role models and their secrets, accessible for the public and useable for educational activities, aiming at fostering entrepreneurial thinking and beyond.- A toolkit for teachers, trainers, stakeholders and multipliers from adult learning institutions and other educational / social sectors, in which the training programme developed in the project will be published together with the training methodologies applied by the partners, and learning experiences made by training participants.We want to highlight the importance of building bridges to external environments, and how helpful communities, associations etc. are for gathering a better position and voice in local societies. We want to assess the beneficiaries’ entrepreneurial competences by different methods (i.e. portfolio work) and give them feedback. This will be done in workshops and trainings. We will improve the entrepreneurial competences and change the entrepreneurial mindset by a process of dialogue with the role models and the reflection on this experience. The partners will work on the objectives with different methods due to their strengths - creative methods, blended and online learning. Through the possibility to transfer the project outcomes to other target groups, further effects of the project may arise at long term. This concerns stakeholders (professionals from education and training institutions, social services and migrant organisations) that are incorporated in the project, and should help to ensure the sustainability of project outcomes.

"When the partners applied for the project many refugees - mainly from Syria - came to Europe, especially to Germany, Austria and Sweden. Amongst them were highly educated people, students, people with diploma etc. From an ethical, economic and social point of view it was and is important to try to integrate those people as fast as possible and to find ways to bring them into the labour market, into jobs, which match their qualifications and competences. This project tried to support refugees and migrants finding a proper track of integration. Its main focus was to support refugees and migrants to get access to higher education, especially universities. The consortium wanted to work on this overall aim by adressing important institutions of education - institutions and NGOS of adult education and universities. Adult education can help the refugees to make their path to universites easier and more effective by different means: language courses, collecting, assessing the competences of the target group and making them visible and offering guidance. In cooperation with universities and other institutions adult education can create paths to make the access to higher education easier and to support processes of validation of given competences and qualifications. The participating organisations were organisations working exactly at the interface with universities, VNB with the open university Niedersachsen, uniT with the Karl-Franzens university and the university of applied sciences in Graz, Cardet with the university of Nicosia, VIFIN with the university of Copenhagen and CESIE with the university of Palermo. The main activities of the project were the meetings of the consortium with local and regional experts to get to know and to discuss good practice examples. Each partner organized a meeting and experts from universities, NGOs, migrants`communities and adult education organisations. They gave an overview of the situation in their country and region and presented good practice examples of how to support the target group. Each partner also brought in its own expertise -VNB its experiences in qualification, guidance and competence checks, uniT its experience in qualification, guidance and competence checks by using creative methods and arts and especially its project ""Silent University"" which gives migrants and refugees the opportunity to show their competences by taking part in research and teaching projects, VIFIN and Cardet their special expertise in blended and online learning, CESIE its expertise in working with migrants and the special method of Danilo Dolci. Stakeholders on local and regional leves were involved in these activities and meetings, too - as guests or as speechers or by getting the newsletters.The activities lead to different interesting results and impacts - for the partners, cooperating organisations and the stakeholders:- It became clear that the language skills are one of the most important barriers. It takes a certain amount of time to learn a language from the scratch to a level which fulfills the demands of higher education. As the refugees often need to earn money as soon as possible they do not have the time and the ressources to invest enough energy in learning the language up to the requested level.- A lot of refugees do not really know the European systems of education. They especially are not familiar with the higher vocational education because that often does not exist in their home countries. They often do not have an instutionalized higher vocational training - one either goes to university or works as an unskilled worker learning by doing. Proper guidance can sort out useful paths for career planning of the target group by focussing on higher vocational education. These paths may much better match their competences and needs as the offers at the university. - Good designed online-tools for guidance, competence checks and language training are really important and helpful. Also to have the chance to do parts of study programmes in certificated online-courses which may be done in English too.- It is very important to open space for migrants and refugees to show their competences even if it is outside the labour market. This is the main idea of the Silent University. Their people can teach, research and communicate in different languages , adressing different topics. This is very important for the development of self-esteem, motivation and social integration. It also stops the process of dequalification.All the partners and the cooperating organisations will continue working on the above mentioned issues in their daily work with the target groups and will spread the results in their regional political and educational networks. They also will try to devleop a further European project. Integrations takes and needs time, so all relevant organisations should not stop to support this important process by their means."

“Social Inclusion of People with Autism Spectrum Disorder Through Virtual Reality” is a project that deals with the social inclusion and employment of people with ASD. People with ASD experience persistent difficulties with social communication and social interaction. The lack of social skills makes it difficult for them to navigate standard everyday situations as well as having a job. Thus, they often experience social exclusion. This project will develop VR tools that through simulated everyday situations will train and enhance the social skills of adults with ASD and improve their ability to navigate standard situations. The innovative part of the project is that the VR toolkit will be developed by people with ASD, which means that the tools will be made by those who will also use them for training. It will also develop a Handbook to help potential employers deal with people with ASD. It will also showcase good practices along this field. A multi-skilled partnership composed by organizations active in the field of digital-based technologies, social, labour market integration, and special educational needs, will develop a VR training toolkit for people with ASD with the purpose of rehabilitation and training of social skills. Furthermore, potential employers will be informed about the advantages of hiring a person with ASD. To reach this final goal partners will:-Make a needs analysis and a VR environment design based on interviews with people with ASD, relatives and professionals working with people with ASD (01)-Develop and implement the VR toolkit (02)-Train key persons in helping people with ASD on how to use the VR tools.-Create a Manual for employment of people with ASD and include good practices (03)-Arrange local multiplier events to disseminate information about the project and it’s outputs.These activities will increase the target group’s ability to navigate standard everyday situations as well as work-related situations. In this way, the project aims to foster social integration and employment opportunities of the target group through VR technology.