As modern societies and economies are changing due to, amongst others, globalisation and technological progress, they rely heavily on highly educated and competent people. Key competences for personal development, employability, active citizenship and social inclusion for growth, employment and participation in society is a crucial theme of the European Education Area. Rural areas as an opportunity for the development of basic skills and key competences is a constituent part of European agenda for the implementation of the Education and Training 2020 strategic framework in the field of adult education. Its contents refer to several priority fields of the renewed EU Agenda for Adult Learning with special emphasis on providing opportunities for adults to develop all forms of basic skills and key competences, intensifying intergenerational cooperation and partnerships at local level, in this particular case in a rural area.The Legends project seeks to develop and implement a methodology for obtaining key compences by exploring intagible heritage - traditional myths and legends in Europe. It addresses adults in rural and remote areas to involve learners with geographical, economic and cultural barriers for learning. The project offers a completely innovative methods and contents by bridging traditional myths and legends with adults’ key competence development. There is striking interest in the myths and legends today thans to their influences in the contemporary culture. E.g. references to Norse mythology became common in science fiction and fantasy literature, role-playing games, and eventually other cultural products such as Japanese manga and the Marvel universe. Over the last 12 or so years, bestselling children’s and young adult authors Joanne Harris and Francesca Simon have written novels with Norse mythic themes. Even Game of Thrones’ icy world beyond the Wall, with its Three-Eyed Raven and White Walkers, riffs on Odin and the frost-giants.In the Legends project the cultural and European heritage linked to myths and legends will take shape in learning material and will continue to express their values through the process of contextualization of the messages inherent in each reading with the specific learning themes with which each legend will have a particular harmony. There are four main archetypes or models of simple story form, that will be refered within the project methodology to key competences:•Heroes and legends – stories about heroic actions. These stories are the heart of mythology through which important cultural values and practices are passed on. Concerned key competence: Active citizenship •Making discoveries – stories of the process that led to an important discovery. These stories guide others toward making their own discoveries or inventing new or better ways of doing things. Concerned key competence: Entrepreneurship•Personal change – tales about self-discovery and personal revelations. These stories are particularly helpful when teaching about how our actions have an impact on others. Concerned key competence: Interpersonal skills, and the ability to adopt new competences•Lessons learned – stories that describe failures and successes, allowing others to avoid mistakes or reach a successful outcome. Concerned key competence: Cultural awareness and expressionThe overall aim of the project is to develop adult learners’ relevant 21st century skills (active citizenship, entrepreneurship, interpersonal skills, and the ability to adopt new competences, cultural awareness and expression, digital and technology-based competences) and foster the learners’ knowledge of the rich European cultural heritage and its values by applying innovative learning approaches and materials consequently improving people’s education level and bringing them closer to cultural heritage, history and the common values of Europe, enhancing their overall development and employability.Legends specific objectives focus on:•Exploring European cultural heritage, such as myths and legends, and their contextualization as cultural and behavioral models to support the learning process and key competence development•Designing and testing a training program for key competence development•Developing “Legend of today” - a story-based digital interactive educational product based on gamification approach with materials and tools to gain core competences and life skills, and to develop learners digital and technology-based competences.Legends project builds its methodology on experiences of 5 partner organisations in adult education and training, and creativity and digitalization of education, and will produce and disseminate at EU level intellectual outputs that will significantly contribute to the innovation of the adult sector in partner countries and beyond.

Although nursing is mostly regulated across the EU, there are limitations regarding nursing assistant/care workers regulation, which vary considerably among different member states. Most regulators require language testing as part of the process of registration and accessing the profession in the host country. The reasons behind this are about patient safety. Healthcare decision making requires that the patient and professional are able to exchange information clearly and freely. Being generally competent in the language of the hosting country did not mean they had the ‘right’ language skills. Moreover, in nursing and caregiving work language is used to facilitate quality care and inform and educate recipients of that care. Language and communication skills and proper cultural behaviours become a fundamental tool in order to increase the job opportunities of health personnel.The Pulse 2.0 project will reinforce and facilitate language and communication competences relevant to the medical workplace in order to improve employability and enhance European competitiveness. The project aims at: improvement and assessment of language, communicative and intercultural competences of nursing assistant and caregivers who work or plan to work in a foreign country Improvement of capacities of VET and language education providers by delivering to them tailored products: workplace language learning and assessment didactic and tools relevant to lower-skilled healthcare professional groupsThe project addresses nursing assistants and personal care workers in mobility or planning mobility, organisations providing tailored training for health care staff, and employers in the health care sector by:- designing, piloting and validating assessment tools aimed at measuring language proficiency in Swedish, Italian and German as foreign languages in an occupational context, more specifically in the nursing and caregiving sector in Sweden, Austria and Italy.- providing an autonomous access to innovative language learning resources and instruments for language skills testing;- facilitating the development of innovative language learning and assessment practices in the field of vocational education and training;- rising awareness of needs of inclusion and of cultural and linguistic diversity in a professional context.The steps for development of the project activities are as follows:• Setting up a network of stakeholders as partners in the development, testing, application and in sustaining the project results after the project endresearch study on the needs for language, communication and intercultural competencies of foreign nursing assistant and caregivers in Sweden, Italy and Austria Development of Methodology for assessment of workplace language and communication for nursing assistants and caregiversDevelopment of Assessment tool - task-based and domain-specific language proficiency tests in Swedish, Italian and German, related to CEFR B1. Development of Learning tool - full package with online preparation materials for the assessment tests in Swedish, Italian and German, designed to be used as part of a VET training , or as self-training.• Piloting the learning and assessment tools in Sweden, Italy, Austria and RomaniaOrganisation of exploitation events in 4 countries for dissemination, valorisation and sustainability. The project’s envisaged outcomes and results (both during the project lifetime and after its end) are:improved linguistic, communication and intercultural skills of foreign nursing assistants and caregivers relevant to the medical workplace, and thus improved employability and enhanced European competitiveness in the sector;improved transversal competences of nursing learners and staff: learning to learn skills and digital competencesincreased motivation of foreign lower-skilled healthcare professional groups a to get involved in language learning and assessment processes providing them with an autonomous access to innovative language assessment resources and instruments for language skills testing Self-recognition by migrant workers of their own skills and competencescontributing to capacity development of VET and language education providers by delivering to them tailored products for workplace language learning and assessment didactic and materials relevant to medical sectordeveloped tools and models for assessment of linguistic and communicative competences of nursing assistants and caregiversraised awareness of inclusion needs, the need to fight racism, prejudice and xenophobia, and the need of cultural and linguistic diversity in a professional contextPulse 2.0 will be implemented by 5 organisations from 5 European countries. European collaboration implies finding more sustainable solutions and establishing a strong international partnership team for future work in this area.

"<< Background >>Misinformation and fake news has existed since the dawn of time, but the advent of social networks and the digitalisation of our societies has undeniably changed the way citizens receive, share and absorb information. And in the public debate, it is clear that the truth is losing ground to the beliefs and emotions aroused by the emergence of misleading stories that have gone viral. MediAware project is shaped with the goal to foster competences for advancing active citizenship by detecting and tackling misinformation and fake news using dialogical and empowering methods addressed to users (Educators) and beneficiaries (adults). Misinformation and spreading of fake news is a time-critical issue. The current pandemic demonstrates powerfully how could misinformation and fake news impact our behaviour and how they could be extremely harmful to our safety and health. The highly competitive media-sector (generation profit) impact the process of news content preparation, sometimes neglecting media ethics. Even if media integrity and trust has risen as a global priority in recent years, online fake news are now considered as a major problem (Watkins, al., Digital News Report, 2017). The digital era and social media have made verifying and trusting news content more complicated, it's a real democratic challenge. The role of education is thus very important, as it can help people to distinguish reliable news from fake news but also to benefit from the benefits of digital technology for an effective participation and integration.<< Objectives >>We are confronted as training and civil organisations as well as individuals to the misinformation and fake news all the time, now a day people (especially our target groups) are more easily affected through the internet because their environment is not controlled and there is no filtering of inappropriate content. The digital era and the internet demand a new kind of literacy (instead of reading, writing and arithmetic) where people need to be confident in their use of technology, the internet and social media.MediAware project will be implemented in the framework of UNESCO definition of media and information literacy defined as “[…] enables citizens to understand the functions of the media and other information providers, critically evaluate their content and make informed decisions as users and producers of information and media content.” It includes the ability to recognize how information have been produced, understand the codes and languages of a message, have the ability to interpret a story and identify the values and views of a message and the construction of reality, the ability to distinguish ""true"" and ""false"" news...We will meet the needs of our educators by equipping and training them about these issues to become able to empower and train our target groups (adults and youngsters in formal and non-formal training settings).<< Implementation >>MediAware project will implement the following activities:1. Design and development of three intellectual outputs (IOs) about misinformation, fake news and active citizenship: A Handbook, a Training kit and a e-Learning Hub2. Pilot and test the above IOs in the six partnership countries with educators (at least 35) and adult learners (at least 105)3. Disseminate and share the project results with a large panel of users (educators), beneficiaries (learners) and organisations active in adult's formal, informal and non-formal training settings (at least 1.000 people to be reached)4. In addition to these specific activities, transversal ones will be also implemented, namely MANAGEMENT activities will stretch over the full duration of the project covering planning, coordination and management,evaluation of the project, as well as dissemination and exploitation of its results and intellectual outputs.<< Results >>Located at the interface of information and communication science and popular education, the MediAware modules offered to learners combine theory and practical workshops. They will enable every learner, regardless of his/her social background, to: - Develop a critical sense and an active approach to media production - Understand in-depth the conditions of information creation- Analyse the language and representations conveyed by an image- Decode the mechanisms of disinformation on the internet and social media and networks- Move away from the emotional approach to rationalise information - Use the media and digital media (including social media) in the exercise of one's citizenship.The following Intellectual Outputs will be developed:1. MediAware HANDBOK - IO1: a guide for educators entitled ""Media, Citizenship and Democracy"", a pedagogical handbook including theoretical & basic concepts, training methods, tips and exploitation guidelines about “misinformation, fake news and active citizenship"".2. MediAware TRAINING KIT - IO2: a training kit supported by a toolbox entitled ""Fact-checking, the actions you can use"", aimed at susceptible young people and adults to enable them to carry out their own fact-checking and to put into practice what they have learned in theory.3. MediAware EDUCATIONAL DIGITAL HUB - IO3: an e-learning platform for open access use which will have 2 thematic objectives 1) Understanding misinformation and fake news mechanisms addressed to educators 2) A set of resources to act addressed to Trainees. The platform aims to raise awareness and develop knowledge on different elements related with misinformation, fake news and active citizenship."