"""Europe as a workspace"" was a student and teacher based two-year project addressing the specific objectives of the Europe 2020 Strategy as outlined by European Commissioner Jean-Claude Juncker in his 2014 agenda for Jobs, Growth, Fairness and Democratic Change. The main objective of this partnership was to develop students' skills (both hard and soft) and employability and to develop teachers' ability to teach students these skills. The national coordinators of each school discussed the project with their students and teachers during the planning phase and we realized all the schools more or less face similar challenges and needs to be addressed. The students commented that they felt unready for the world of work and that they were having hard time in focusing their attention in lessons. They also complained they were expected to focus on just academic success or vocational qualification but they felt unsure of what skills are required at the next level of education or for various professions in the world of work. Besides they had problems making decisions about their future careers .The teachers commented that they didn't know how skills can be taught in the best way in classes and assessing the acquisition of skills was a great challenge for them. The partnership had two primary objectives, one aimed at students and one aimed at teachers:1- Concerning the students; to equip them with both hard and soft skills that can encourage each student to participate effectively and constructively in the workplace and socially both inside and outside their own countries. 2- Concerning the teachers, to strengthen teacher's skills based teaching practice through transnational cooperation and by adopting innovative, effective and new methods and tools in order to bridge the gap between education and employability skills.The target groups and stakeholders of this project were the students and the teachers that participated directly in the project; the other students and teachers of the 8 participating schools; the local business communities such as experts from employment bureaus, chambers of commerce, companies; other schools as local stakeholders; universities; educational authorities; families; and the students and teachers from other schools in Europe.The project results are both of tangible and non-tangible character. The tangible results are: an e-book (the final product); a toolbox of skills; the project related videos created by the students; a toolbox for teaching and assessment of skills; a collection of lesson plans prepared according to the innovative lesson plan model; a board game; a promotional poster, brochure, video and the project logo; the project website; the teachers' wikispace platform; the e-twinning group; the twinspace project on e-twinning; an innovative product or service based on students' coding experience; the students' professional portfolios; the learning diaries; the online newspapers, two surveys to evaluate the success of the project, the students’ blogs and the promotional video. Referring to the non-tangible results; the students became more creative and enterprising and held a practical experience in communication and collaboration, critical thinking, problem solving, decision making, meta cognition, personal learning strategies, citizenship, life (and career) skills, personal and social responsibility, cultural awareness and expression, interpersonal and intercultural skills. Thus, the students became more motivated to stay at school and continue with a higher education. We also realised an enormous increase in the teachers' skills based teaching practice through transnational cooperation and by adopting innovative, effective and new methods and tools.During the two year project duration, there took place 3 transnational meetings and 4 learning/teaching/training activities. The first and second transnational meetings at the beginning of each project year were for planning and preparation purposes while the last one was organized for the evaluation and the sustainability of the project. Also there took place teacher training alongside with each transnational meeting and learning/teaching/training activity.In the long term we aim at recognition of our e-book, the toolbox for teaching and assessment of skills and innovative lesson plan model as teaching materials. We believe the project will also contribute to a well-qualified and highly motivated workforce in Europe while employers will be able to access the workforce with the skills they need. We would like to be an example for similar educational organizations and, if possible, we want to help our colleagues, all school stakeholders and NAs in promoting the Erasmus+ projects about teaching and assessing skills"

Our project intended to tackle the challenge of the refugee crisis directly where it concerns us: in the integration of newly arrived refugee children or migrants to our schools. To attein this objective we wanted to improve the inclusive structures at the schools involved in order to reach a higher level of well-being within the school community and especially for young refugees or migrants newly arriving in the countries and at our schools. It aimed at preventing discrimination, improving democratic practices, fostering communication and cooperation processes at our schools and at developping emphathy with and motivation to practically assist young refugees/migrants in and outside the schools. It also aimed at promoting intercultural, language and IT competences.After the dropout of one partner we were finally four schools in the project, from Belgium, Germany, Italy and Greece. All schools were more or less directly concerned by the arrival of young refugees/migrants in their cities and at their schools. The students involved were 16-18 years old, they came from general or vocational orientation. Teachers came from different school departments and had different qualifications to guide or accompany the work. which was done mostely through cross curricular studies. During our project meetings we had lectures, round tables, group work, presentations, expert conferences and practical exercises. We developped common agreements, rules for school life and practical hints for helping refugees/migrants within the school life. We played inclusive games, had arts, music and sports activities and practised cooking together. All these activities were done involving refugee or migrant youngsters whereever it was possible. We visited hotspots, centres for unaccompanied minors and other refugee accomodations, cooperated with NGOs and other help or rescue organisations and created links to political, social or administrative authorities in our towns.Besides many smaller documents like flyers, posters or booklets our big final product is a 180 pages strong handbook showing the work we did during the two years of our project and providing all kind of materials concerning the historical aspect of migration but also the practical work to be done. It should help other institutions find practical answers to the question how to integrate young refugees or migrants.The impacts of our project are noumerous, as our final evaluation showed. Next to a growth in general skills and competences for both students and teachers, as we expect on this kind of international projects, the most important and perhaps most difficult aims to reach are the awareness of the importance of acceptance of all, of solidarity and of democratic thinking and the importance of fighting against racism and discrimination. Throughout the whole project, we gave ‘the refugees’ a name, a face and a voice. The impact of all the activities concerning refugees, the growth towards mutual understanding and acceptance of all was clearly noticeable. The impact on the overall wellbeing of the young people involved in the project is one of the most striking outcomes. Equally important are the lessons learned for future projects and for future school life. All partners will select some good practices learned from the others and evaluate to what extent they can be useful for their own school and look for methods to make more school participants benefit from the results in the future.Given the search for improvement, the exchange of good practices e.g. on democratic and inclusive structures in each partner school, the exchange of experiences on the way refugees are welcomed and guided at school, and the reinforcement of the cooperation with other stakeholders and other schools, the project has an impact on every partner school. The search for improving the existing structures and measures will continue. In addition the attempts to implement certain topics and activities into the school curricula will go on after the project.For all contents and information of the project and for consulting our final product - the Handbook - please follow the links:http://prointegrate.wixsite.com/plushttp://prointegrate.wixsite.com/plus/disseminationBecause of the drop out of the Swedish school the learning, teaching, training activities had to be reorganized as dates and some contents changed.They have been renamed in the way shown underneath, following the chronological order of the meetings.The number of participants getting EU financial support for travel and individual support remained exactely the same as officially granted.C1 Learning, teaching, training activity to Avola, ItalyC2 Learning, teaching, training activity to Thessaloniki, Greece, first mobilityC3 Learning, teaching, training activity to Kenzingen, GermanyC4 Learning, teaching, training activity to Thessaloniki, Greece, second mobilityC5 Learning, teaching, training activity to Dendermonde, Belgium