The European Commission launched many initiatives in the last few years for the development of Accessible Tourism, in order to increase the awareness and availability of accessible destinations and products across Europe. Its latest products, the studies on Demand, Training and Supply, describe a situation where a lot of steps forward have been completed but which is still lacking in homogeneity, in a more widespread availability of accessible destinations and offers and in their managerial quality.In particular, the capacity of existing training offer to reach the final users, businesses and public bodies, still deserves a wider attention and efforts to make the EC investments profitable in terms of increased quality and managerial capacity by SMEs operating in the tourism sector.APP TOUR YOU aimed at qualifying human resources in the tourism sector by designing and developing multi-facet training tools on accessibility issues, addressed and tailored to tourism SMEs. Besides a basic knowledge of the tourism for all topic, these training tools aim at providing workers in the tourism sector with the skills needed to correctly describe the characteristics of usability of their premises and services by tourists with specific needs, through a full understanding of the Design for All concepts and the use of self-assessment tools. This expertise meets one of the major critical issues of people with disability when travelling: the availability of reliable, verified and update information on the usability of their destination offer from the point of view of all possible tourism activities to be performed there.These skills are particularly important for SMEs, which represent the group of tourism offer with major appeal for tourist with average spending capability. Thanks to training tools developed by the project, they will be able to be visible on the web, with a reliable description of their offer, reaching a target whom they are normally overlooking as they feel not experienced enough to be able to cater for them properly.To reach its objectives the project will develop the following main activities:- implementation of a blended training course to train 16 operators of tourism SMEs to become facilitators in the field of tourism for all and accessibility assessments. On the basis of a defined training path and with the support of a produced training kit, the 16 operators were trained online on the basic principles of tourism for all and face-to face on how to collect and provide information on the characteristics of usability of tourism facilities by people with specific needs.- design and production of a self-learning mobile and web application to help tourism operators to make a self-assessment of their facilities and to give back the gathered information. The App has been designed and developed through a bottom up approach, with the help of the tourism operators trained in the blended course.- design and definition of the training path and kit of a Massive Open Online Course for the qualification of hospitality workers in the field of accessibility, with a focus on the collection and release of information on the usability of tourism facilities by tourists with specific needs. Also the design of the MOOC training kit followed a bottom up approach, with the involvement of the tourism operators trained in the blended course.- testing of the Massive Open Online Course on tourism accessibility, services assessment and information which involved lot more than the expected 250 managers and staff of EU tourism SMEs (around 700) who have been assisted, during the course, by the tourism operators trained to become MOOC facilitators. The MOOC was supported by an open highly interactive platform hosted in the project’s website www.apptouryou.eu/mooc, where the trainees had the possibility to dialogue with their peers and with partners’ experts.- production of a Manual of sustainability and replicability of the MOOC to allow the transferability of the project training tools and experiences both to other EU countries and to other stakeholders in the different categories of the tourism service chain.- dissemination and exploitation of the MOOC and the main project results through conferences in the partner countries, newsletters, social media, etc.In order to broaden its impacts and extend its benefits over time, all materials produced and used by APP TOUR YOU are open and available in the project website as means to produce quality information on accessibility to be put in the European Directory of Accessible Tourism PANTOU (www.pantou.org). Moreover, after the end of the project, partners will continue to host the MOOC structure to be reused in a “connectivist form” (without trainers and webinars but sharing materials, comments, blogs and experience) by interested stakeholders: groups of self-gathered learners, international networks, local public institutions.

"Context and background of the project: Internationalisation at present is primarily focused on HE staff and students as the target groups and on mobility as the main activity, while Internationalisation at Home (IaH) is still marginal. Even in the most advanced and internationalised HEIs, internationalisation is still inward oriented and not strongly focused on the wider community. HEIs are increasingly active, however, in social engagement (third mission) but these activities, as the TEFCE mapping report states, are usually viewed as competing for priority and relevance with excellence in research and internationalisation. Massive social challenges with a strong connection with internationalisation are also apparent: climate change (e.g. with respect to air travel mobilities) and xenophobia/populism to name only a few. For these challenges, internationalisation will be in need of strong instruments to support change which at the same time would be considered social engagement and - since most of these activities will take place in the home community of the respective HEI - IaH. As TEFCE stated, however, internationalisation and social engagement today usually do not cooperate but instead compete for resources. IHES explicitly aims to change this and activate the internationalisation potential for social engagement. It is therefore placed in a highly relevant and changing social and political environment, not the least considering the COVID-19 crisis. Objectives:IHES aims to build any activity concerning the real needs of society. IHES also wants to test different approaches in a ""regional lab"" setting, thereby also using a quasi-experimental design by working in two different regions (Catalonia and Olomouc). The regions were also chosen due to both experiences in regional cooperation as well as specific societal challenges. Different approaches will be tested, compared and then set into context with findings related to the first objective. IHES additionally wants to generate knowledge that can be easily transferred from the regions and partners involved in the project. As many HEIs as possible will be able to learn from the experiences and apply their own IHES projects. Finally, IHES wants to ensure that the entire project is based on a multi-level inclusive approach that takes into account the main target groups for the project (see also below): HEIs and their networks, societal actors and their networks and regional governments. All Ios, as well as especially the constellation of the consortium, serve this goal.Number and profile of participants:Apart from the consortium members and their direct affiliates (esp. members of ACA, SGroup and LLLP), we will include members of local and regional university and student groups as well as participants from the wider public. Overall, we plan to have more than 500 individuals involved in various ways.Description of activities:IHES builds on a combination of desk research, exchange with different stakeholder groups, activities for individuals from society and university, continuous partner exchange and cooperation, production of various types of highly pragmatic and applicable products (guidelines, reports) and several multiplier events. All these activities are linked to each other and form part of different IOs. At the same time, all IOs build logically and chronologically on each other, assuring a step-by-step approach.The methodology to be used in carrying out the IHES project:As explained above, IHES employs a mixed method approach, using quantitative and qualitative methods of data collection and analysis, desk research as well as interviews and group discussions, within the consortium members and outside, with a strict hierarchical order of IOs.A short description of the results and impact envisaged:The results will be on three levels: individuals (personality traits, attitudes towards internationalisation, intercultural competence), the organisations involved (HEIs, societal actors, HE partners) with regard to IHES, and the wider HE community outside the project consortium with regard to the relevance of IHES. IHES also generates long-term effects by establishing a network of IHES ""enthusiasts"" by the end of the project cycle. Based on all the partner organisations, this network should to be open to any organisation beyond the consortium to establish an awareness for and interest in IHES activities, also long after the project ends. IHES will produce a series of tangible products in the form of reports, guidelines, videos and other materials. The planned dissemination activities, using social media intensively, are also designed to generate a certain intangible result: a shift in the mindset of the wider internationalisation community towards more engagement with the public. We also hope to closely link the results to the COVID-19 crisis and the lessons learned."

"New forms of work have appeared, prompted by digital development that forces business and workers to be more open, more collaborative. Despite the ever growing need for STEM skills, fewer and fewer youngsters tend to go on with scientific or technical studies. This is a true challenge to fight unemployment in most countries of the European Union. Here, the Leze and the Catalunia territories, while being two distinct environments, both undergo a weaker and weaker economic and social situation combined with a lack of pupils' interest in scientific and technical subjects. Although youngsters are avid users of digital media, they often prove to lack genuine knowledge in the ability to use ICT. To improve this situation, the Lèze area as well as Catalunya have been involved for a few years in projects of creative and sustainable territories known as “ smart cities”. Today their ambition is to transfer this model to the school system, by inciting the whole educative community ( teachers, educative staff, pupils, parents, educators) to imagine a smart school for tomorrow.This 24-month project (September 2015 - September 2017), is an experimental project inviting the entire educational community of colleges (teachers, parents, educational staff, local authorities partners) to imagine innovations, technical, pedagogical, functional, for the college and the city, in order to adapt spaces to uses actually lived or ""dreamed"". By transforming the college into a space for innovation and the production of collaborative knowledge, the goal is to put the student's creativity and imagination at the heart of teaching, the citizen at the heart of digital innovation.This project is called “Collaborative Design for Smart Pupils”. Nine partners are involved, four in France and five in Spain: they are the community of “communes” of the Arize Lèze valley; André Saint Paul and François Verdier middle school; the centre of scientific and technical culture of the Midi- Pyrénées region, Science Animation; the generalitat de Catalunya with its department of innovation and research, the Virolai and Ernest Lluch middle school; the Everis foundation, which is specialised in the evaluation of public policies and The Social Coin enterprise. A first step of the project is to share a common culture of work around digital creation. This preliminary step is also an opportunity to validate the collaborative educational approach at work in the project and to program the first educational sequences of the digital innovation and creation workshops. The objective of these workshops, organized in an iterative and incremental way, is to invite the pupils to ask about their college and their city a new glance by taking into account the various actors and uses. Through the acquisition of skills and theoretical technical knowledge and experimentation, students invent innovation projects adapted to their environment. During two consecutive creative stays in Spain and then in France, students experience times of discovery and sharing on science as well as common creation times on their respective projects. All of this experience is documented and archived on the Social Coin collaborative platform and the project's website, a real toolbox composed among other things of methodological sheets and videos retracing the process and the results achieved. The creation of this platform encourages and facilitates transnational collaboration around scientific and technical projects aimed at improving the school and the city on the basis of creative challenges, and thus contributes to the emergence of a learning community in Europe. the European scale. Finally, thanks to the realization of an impact study, this project made it possible to measure the place of digital creativity in the school motivation of young people in favor of scientific and technical education.In the end, the project made it possible to experiment with a renewed teaching of STEM, basing it on digital technology and creativity. A multi-disciplinary and transnational approach that reduces inequalities in access to knowledge by improving the acquisition of the cognitive skills necessary to evolve in the complex conceptual world of the digital society. The results were disseminated several times during events dedicated to collaborative and digital pedagogical practices, ""It World Edu"" and ""Social Internet Day"" in Barcelona, and ""Fab Lab ephemeral"" in Ax-les-Thermes ."