<< Background >>Climate change is a reality of our times, and its negative impacts intensify day by day. With their solution-oriented and valuable perspectives, social enterprises contribute to the activities to save the future of our planet. Today, rapid digital transformation offers opportunities to develop social entrepreneurship ideas to drive social and environmental impacts while creating sustainable outputs to fight against environmental challenges. New technologies hold the key to resolving many of the significant problems in our environment: access to drinking water, electricity, quality education and health, improving the quality of care and the quality of life in cities, and conservation of the environment, among others. Digital technologies allow social enterprises to contribute positive social and environmental changes while enabling them to sustain their livings through financially viable social enterprises. However, social enterprises are in a precarious position in terms of their sustainability. According to research, 71% of social entrepreneurs still struggle to make a living from a social venture. (https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/businessreview/2020/06/11/self-sustainability-the-dilemma-at-the-heart-of-social-entrepreneurship/). They experience difficulties in finding financial resources to continue their activities. While social enterprises work to a more sustainable environment, they suffer from sustainability problems in their business. Although digitalization offers enormous opportunities, environmental social enterprises can not exploit them adequately, and they lack digitalizing their business ideas or experiences.This situation reveals the urgent need to improve environmental social entrepreneurship activities through digital technologies. Digital transformation provides parallel growth of socioenvironmental and financial value for social enterprises. Using digital technologies in social enterprises serves as a supportive function to improve sustainability through enhancing convenience and efficiency while lowering costs of enterprises. (Gregori & Holzmann, 2020). Therefore, sustainability can be achieved through engaging digital technologies in the activities of environmental social enterprises. This aim has to be supported by comprehensive training materials, methodologies, and innovative tools for youth workers to improve their digital-based social entrepreneurship activities. Because youth workers are both insufficient and lack of resources in digital social entrepreneurship activities. The gamification approach is one of the most appropriate tools to access youth workers and strengthen their digital-based entrepreneurship skills. (https://www.pure.ed.ac.uk/ws/portalfiles/portal/15495710/Games_final_JRC78777.pdf). For this reason, the gamification methodology, which attracts more attention of young people and has proven to be more effective concretely, needs to be adapted to the training materials for improving the entrepreneurship skills of youth workers. Consequently, accessibility and connectivity provided by digital tools enlarge the impact areas of social enterprises and equip youth workers with innovative tools to fight against environmental and social challenges.<< Objectives >>Accordingly, the overall objective of the project is to improve environmental social entrepreneurship activities of youth work through digitalization.The specific objectives are;•Enhancing the competencies of youth workers on digital-based social/environmental entrepreneurship training activities through increasing innovative and high-quality in-formal and non-formal training materials•Promoting social entrepreneurship spirit and raising awareness of environmental issues among young people; and encouraging them to become an E-MAKER for their local communities. •Building capacities of organizations on innovative social entrepreneurship training to work transnationally and across sectorsOther issues that we want to achieve by the project are as follows: ( for youth workers, young people within the institution and outside, social enterprises and other relevant stakeholders)- Strengthening the social entrepreneurship activities of youth workers and equipping them with educational materials including innovative digital tools- Developing advanced digital skills of youth workers (in terms of social entrepreneurship; marketing, financial strategy, digital environmental solutions, sustainable green communities, etc.)- To improve the professional and soft skills of youth workers, to increase their professional motivation and daily satisfaction- To increase the communication of youth workers with their colleagues and to improve their business skills to work at the EU level- Adapting the gamification methodology that may attract the attention of young people to the youth work of participating institutions- Creating a road map to contribute to the sustainability of Social Enterprises- Contributing to the internationalization strategies of institutions and promoting cross-border cooperation- To increase the opportunities of young people to benefit from digital opportunities to their green skills- To improve young people soft skills by increasing their communication with cross-border transmitters; For example, active citizenship, environmental activism, solidarity and social entrepreneurship, teamwork spirit, environmental awareness, digital / social entrepreneurship, communication, self-return, etc. (LTT activity)- To create a more sustainable society, in both a social and environmental sense, into an opportunity to build a professional future through entrepreneurship and social innovation.<< Implementation >>Activities were designed to meet the identified needs in the field of social entrepreneurship. Each activity and the output will support the objectives of the project. The main activity of the project will be the development of three intellectual outputs. Through transnational meetings, LTT activity, and multiplier events, the quality of the outputs will be intensified. Accordingly,The development of the intellectual outputs:The non-formal training toolkit of digital social entrepreneurship: will be produced for the youth workers to improve their skills and resources to train young people on social entrepreneurship and environmental challenges including digital opportunities. The training materials included in the toolkit will be designed by non-formal learning methodologies. In this way, the transversal and soft skills of young people will be enhanced as well as the social entrepreneurship skills. LTT activity will be significant to assess the quality of the training materials and to make necessary improvements.The manual for digitalization of social enterprises: will be developed to enhance the advanced digital skills of the youth workers. The manual will cover all stages and the workflows in the social enterprises, including data management, financial management and marketing, education, research, and capacity building activities for the environmental issues. EU&PRO will be an associated partner for organizing virtual classes for youth workers after completing the output. Through these virtual classes, youth workers will receive training on digital opportunities to be employed in different stages of social enterprises. On the one hand, the functionality of training materials in the online manual will be tested, and on the other hand, youth workers will gain invaluable skills and resources to improve the sustainability of their enterprises.Virtual Board Game: will improve the social entrepreneurship skills of youth workers and young people in innovative and enjoyable ways. The game will be instructive for the target groups since players will learn the fundamentals of social entrepreneurship, the models of social enterprises, and how to achieve sustainability while playing the game. Playtesting sessions will be implemented to test the game with youth workers from partner institutions after completing the output. Through these playtesting sessions and feedback received from participants, improvements will be made to the game. Furthermore, the virtual board game will be available on online platforms without any costs or limitations. In this way, the project will reach more target groups beyond the European borders.LTT activity:The aim of the activity is to improve the social entrepreneurship skills of young people aged between 18-30. Young people who are working to fight against environmental challenges in youth initiatives, university clubs, or individually will be encouraged to implement their innovative ideas in social enterprises through this activity. All training materials will be designed to equip young people with the necessary skills and competencies. Moreover, through LTT activity, the toolkit will be tested whether the training materials are of desired quality or not. Transnational Meetings:Through the meetings, the quality of the project outputs, the time and budget management, and the general project management will be regulated by all partner institutions. These meetings will strengthen the coordination and communication between partners. In this way, a productive working environment will be ensured to improve the quality, effects, and scope of the activities. Multiplier Events:During the multiplier events and dissemination activities, project outputs and results will be introduced to the target groups, NGOs, decision-making authorities, and individuals. Thanks to these activities, the awareness of environmental problems and social entrepreneurship will be increased in society.<< Results >>The project will produce both tangible and intangible results on participants, target groups, participating institutions, and broader circles. Three intellectual outputs will be the most significant tangible results of the project.The intellectual outputs will be used by the participating institutions to improve youth workers' digital competencies and promote social entrepreneurship training of young people. The non-formal toolkit and the online manual to be produced as tangible results will enhance the quality of management, research, marketing, and youth work in the participating institutions by strengthening the social entrepreneurship skills and advanced digital competencies of youth workers. In this way, the partner institutions will satisfy the needs of their target groups with innovative and comprehensive resources. Moreover, the transnational cooperation will enable the participating institutions to produce quality results to improve the sustainability of the social enterprises and the social entrepreneurship skills of young people. Youth workers will become much more competent in managing all stages in and the workflow of the social enterprises by completing the project and integrating the intellectual outputs into the everyday activities of the participating institutions. Furthermore, a virtual board game will add value to the capacities of the participating institutions by increasing their recognition and reputation at the international level.The project activities will enhance the know-how for all partners, improving capacities and professionalism to work at the EU level, strengthening their networks across Europe.Furthermore, the participants from all partner institutions will benefit from the results produced during the project. The project's outcomes will create the ideal setting for participants from partner institutions to develop more modern, professional, and open working environments. Transversal and soft skills obtained throughout the project implementation will add value to the work culture in the institutions. The project results will enhance the management, team-working, and communication skills of managing staff and project working groups in all participating institutions. Other expected results of the project are as follows:Youth workers will be provided comprehensive training materials on advanced digital skills to manage the workflow of the social enterprises in all stages, including financial management and marketing, data management, research, education, and capacity-building for the environmental issues.Youth workers will be equipped with innovative tools, training methodologies, and materials to train young people on digital social entrepreneurship and environmental challenges.The outputs of the project will strengthen the non-formal training capacities of the youth workers and, in this way, the necessary quality human resources will be provided for the sustainability of the social enterprises.Through the implementation of the intellectual outputs, young people will receive quality tips, clue or information on social entrepreneurship.Through non-formal training activities, young people’s social entrepreneurship skills, as well as soft skills such as team-working, communication, and initiative skills, will be enhanced.The awareness of environmental issues will be increased among young people, and they will be encouraged to take action to solve these problems and to become E-Makers.The project results will be disseminated to the wider circles so that other social enterprises will benefit from the training materials and tools produced during the project. The awareness of environmental challenges will be increased in society. In this way, the social enterprises will be able to build relationships with other interest groups, institutions, and initiatives across the boundaries.

“DEE-GEAYS: Digital Education Era - Global citizenship Education for Activating Youth online Space” idea is capitalized on the analysis of the youth work sector needs to provide timely and innovative response towards alarming environmental challenges along with the rapid and irreversible social challenges caused by the current context of Covid-19 pandemic. Recent “hot-button” switch, imposed by the pandemic, required an immediate and creative solution for optimization of both formal and non formal education: while the formal education sector managed to adapt rather quickly, the youth work is still in need to understand how to continue reaching its mission and keep bonded connection to our target groups in the context of limited interpersonal connections. Reaching young people through group learning mobilities will not be latterly possible and neither sustainable in terms of environment, we believe the sector has to reinforce the Erasmus+ Virtual Exchange initiative and invest into finding innovative solutions for non-formal e-learning. Thus the DEE-GEAYS main objective is to capitalize existing knowledge, experience and creativity potential of the youth work sector for creating an innovative digital tool that will allow exploiting ICT for providing quality learning activities online. To respond to the sector needs, the project foresees development of 4 consecutive intellectual outputs leading to the development of an innovative digital tool (IO5) – online platform that will offer virtual learning rooms for non-formal education activities with a pool of dynamic audio-visual materials (video tutorials, recordings, podcasts) that can be used by the youth workers and by individual learners. To realize a fully functional platform, first IOs are dedicated to collaborative achievement of the quality contents for the platform. We decided to focus on global citizenship education (GCE) because the concept of GCE is under the main gunsight of upcoming socio-economical global crisis: it is important to anticipate promotion of the global solidarity but at the same time, GCE that generally is considered to have 3 levels: cognitive, behavioural and socio-emotional (SEL) whereas the latest (SEL education) offers today the most relevant response to the needs of the youth across the globe who had to cope with the isolation. SEL involves the development of skills that facilitate learners’ emotional welfare and successful interactions with others, ability to cope with stress, manage own emotions and understand emotions of others – we consider this is the essential dimension of the GCE be tackled in current contexts in order to build global solidarity throughout first of all supporting personal emotional well-being of youths after pandemics. The project foresees desk researches on GCE-SEL states of art and NFE methods (IO1) and on the digitalization of NFE (existing methodologies, available tools and best practices) (IO2) as the first phase on the way to reach its objective: creating a solid theoretical base will set up environment for the development of a coherent lab cycle methodology management (IO3), implemented on practice during 5 local labs in each partner country provided in total to 105 participants. Local labs, focused on GCE-SEL education with elements of digitalization will allow participants to enhance own SEL level, improve well-being and gather attribution to the global citizenship and solidarity. The constructive feedback from participants will allow the consortium to create quality content for the virtual library uploaded to the digital tool. A series of educational podcasts (IO4) will be implemented basing on the labs results with an aim to promote the values of global solidarity and give basic tools for those who would like to practice SEL. All deliverables, IO1, IO2, revised IO3 after the labs, podcast IO4 will be uploaded on the digital tool IO5. Current proposal is innovative in terms of offering to the youth work sector not only ready-to-use platform for providing distant non-formal learning, but also tools for digitalization of own accomplished, ongoing and future project results in the virtual library offered by the tool. Tapping potential of the ICT is on top of current EU Youth agenda, digitalization of youth work is becoming a higher priority if we want to continue reaching efficiently our target group, especially in the current circumstances of limited mobility and limited group gatherings. The project will create an enabling environment for further quality gradual digitalization of the youth work sector in Europe. This shall support further digitalization of Erasmus+ initiatives thus also provide more opportunities to young people with fewer opportunities and contribute to the global environment goals due to consequential decrease of unessential travels, while young people will be able to still benefit from the non-formal learning being in contact with their peers from the other countries.

<< Background >>Children today read less frequently than any previous generation and enjoy reading less than young people did in the past, according to new research. The work, to be published by the National Literacy Trust in the run-up to World Book Day, shows that in 2019 just 26% of under-18s spent some time each day reading. This is the lowest daily level recorded since the charity first surveyed children’s reading habits in 2005. It also found that fewer children enjoy reading, and that this dwindled with age: nearly twice as many five to eight-year-olds as 14 to 16-year-olds said they took pleasure from reading. Overall, just 53% of children said they enjoyed reading “very much” or “quite a lot” – the lowest level since 2013. The survey found a marked gender divide when it comes to reading for pleasure: less than half (47%) of boys were keen readers, compared with 60% of girls. A third of children surveyed reported being unable to find things to read that interested them. A report based on a recent survey of over 8,000 English primary and secondary school students investigates why some students choose to read while others do not. According to the research literature, children benefit from reading for pleasure in a variety of ways. According to research, young people's enjoyment of reading is dwindling. Given current political concerns about reading and the obvious benefits of reading for pleasure, it is critical that more emphasis be placed on reading enjoyment both at school and at home.<< Objectives >>By this project we plan to: Create a culture in which all pupils are encouraged to be enthusiastic readers. To support this goal, all school staff will implement an effective approach by consulting with students to learn their interests and to ensure that the range of reading materials available in school reflects those interests. We are aware that a diverse range of reading materials will encourage students to read, for example websites, comics and magazines. We will engage children in the planning and delivery of reading and library activities, reading campaigns, offering them the opportunity to select and purchase reading materials for their use. Consider how to engage boys with reading. In addition to the encouragement of boys reading around their personal interests, particular attention needs to be given to the involvement of male staff, community role models and fathers. This will be implemented by the teacher training activities and parent collaboration which will aim sharing practices that involve students in creating a reading culture. Consider how they can support parents in encouraging reading in the home. The role of the home is important for all children. Home-school practices that successfully involve all parents in ways they value for strengthening involvement in their children’s home and school reading, need to be shared between schools. Both teachers and school staff can support this work.Raise reading awareness.<< Implementation >>During the course of this project, we will attend three transnational meetings and produce four intellectual outputs. The first intellectual output aims to be a manual of 50 best practices for getting students to read more. This will be carried out following the collection of all relevant data from the student survey. The guide will demonstrate the evaluation of best practices from across Europe. Another activity that will highlight the round of activities that will be held is the campaign on ‘How to Promote Book Reading.' In order to increase its effectiveness, this campaign will make use of current reading trends and applications. During the promotional campaign, a teacher training event will be held. This activity is then to be piloted in order to successfully implement the reading campaign into schools. The report will define the impact of the campaign. A useful content on developing reading skills that are said to be underachieving will be provided. The content will be used by teachers to develop teacher training in developing reading skills that were identified as underachieving in PISA 2018. The impact will be followed by the development of an impact report. Last but not least, the work will be finalized by a policy recommendation for each local government along with the dissemination conference.<< Results >>In recent times, lack of cultivating the habit of reading has been the concern of all stakeholders. The lack of enthusiasm for secondary school students for reading has contributed to many failures such as poor writing and limited understanding about what they are taught in class(Evidence http://article.sapub.org/10.5923.j.library.20180701.03.html) Reading is important because it develops the mind. Understanding written word is one way mind grows in its ability. Teaching young children to read helps them develop their language skills. Lack of listening skills can result in major misunderstandings. The project addresses mainly the low performance of students in different reading skills. The goal of our project is to encourage kids to read more in order to close that “million-word gap” and to make the most out of reading. Direct beneficiaries of this project are secondary school students and teachers(age of students 14-19 years old). The digital era has affected the nature of reading as a habit as well. Nowadays every information comes from the screen of a smartphone. For that reason technology will be used as a project driver. The project develops a clear guideline on how to involve students in more reading targeting the teachers using 50 gathered good practices across Europe (PR1). It will also determine a practical way on how to promote reading by using the multimedia toolbox(PR2) which is going to be developed during the project. Two different teacher training will be developed - PR2- teacher training on how to promote reading into schools, and PR3- Teacher training on developing reading skills which are recognized in PISA 2018 as underachieving. The focus will be on reading fluency, locating information as searching and selecting relevant text, understanding and evaluating and reflecting which leads to creativity and imagination. After piloting the teacher training, and implementation of the reading campaign into schools will take place, which will give clear feedback of the materials provided, topping it off with the impact report. Due to the PISA 2018 report, youngsters are no more likely to distinguish between facts and opinions. After attracting students to read more, the next step will be to teach them how to use reading as a tool(to skim read)and to make the most out of reading as a habit. Moreover, a proposal recommendation report will be created for each local government. The project will be distributed in 7 different countries. We planned a total of 420 students to participate in project. They will be aged between 14 and 19 years old. Also a total of 210 teachers will participate in training activities. Indirect beneficiaries are other students in partner schools, as well as other teachersAcquired knowledge and skills during the project • Students are able to identify the main idea in a text of moderate length, find information based on explicit, though sometimes complex, criteria, and reflect on purpose and form of texts when explicitly directed to do so • Teachers are able to identify the problem related to reading, have a clear vision on how to improve reading skills and habits and motivate studentsThe impact will be • Students will improve their reading skills by having a positive attitude towards reading • Students will open their horizons by raising self-awareness and self-esteem • Teachers will improve education quality by comparing pedagogical approaches and teaching methods; sharing experience and best practices • Teachers will improve educational materials and methods and will enhance social skills and communication abilities • Both Teaching staff and students will develop creativity, flexibility, empathy and responsibility, will increase willingness to get involved in extracurricular activities and gain team spirit • Teachers and students will improve their ICT skills and language skills • Teachers and students will enhance social and communication abilities