<< Background >>The WINnovators project stems from the belief that Higher Education Institutions can play as catalysts of change within the territories where they are located, contributing proactively to shaping socioeconomic development processes.Starting from this conviction, WINnovators develops tailored capacity-building actions primarily between the Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) from the WINnovators consortium and associated partners, then among the other non-academic partners (business incubators, tech companies, NGOs), to strengthen the links with society and business and reinforce the systemic impact of the Project Results. It is indeed necessary that HEIs act as change agents to foster sustainability and innovation goals and educate their students to guide and support other disadvantaged people - such as young women from rural communities - in the transformative innovation paths encouraged by peer-to-peer learning.Taking this approach requires reconfiguring teaching and learning practices in HEIs towards capacity development approaches that involve Open Innovation Ecosystems (OIE), communities and informal learners into teamwork practices, to transform young women’s careers towards digital, STEM/STEAM innovation, entrepreneurship and sustainability.In other words, there is the need for new approaches on how to attract marginalised young women to the blended informal-formal learning methodologies that could increase their career possibilities and open up the outreach to innovative, expert communities such as at HEIs and OIEs.Specifically, the WINnovators project stems from the following needs: i) The need for promoting digital, entrepreneurial, STEM/STEAM innovation and sustainability competencies of young women from rural areas and outskirts regions who are facing socio-economic difficulties because of the pandemic, or the lack of experience and skills and the absence of mentors and partners with whom develop further their own innovative business approaches. We believe that such young women fall into a risk category because of the lack of opportunities in their regional neighbourhood to engage with people who can accelerate their innovation ideas locally. The WINnovators project tackles unconscious biases regarding female entrepreneurship, innovation, and leadership. It indicates the need for such forms of learning and development of own entrepreneurial ideas, STEM/STEAM and digital innovation and sustainability competencies that are provided digitally, facilitating the learning process through problem-based settings. ii) The proved need of the HEIs to proactively develop new teaching and learning approaches that build innovation and entrepreneurial capacities across HEIs, OIE partners and communities, thus creating responsive environments to boost innovation and sustainability equally in the partners’ regions. The sustainability is achieved through the development of a shared capacity for being responsive to the needs of people and of the environment. The good approaches for HEIs on how to stream collectively towards capacity building are not yet developed and empirically tested.iii) The need of HEIs to develop novel teaching and learning approaches that engage HEI students and external informal learners (such as young women in the rural communities) to experience and develop jointly collective level capabilities and build the capacity in STEM/STEAM, innovation, sustainability and entrepreneurship, teaching them how to act as change agents in their communities and activate people with fewer opportunities towards innovative careers. WINnovators is not limited to the development of students’ competencies, but it aims to build collective level capabilities that they can evoke after graduation in their local communities. This is a practice that can be trained only in action settings, such as the ones developed by WINnovators, which binds together HEIs and the needs of young rural women at risk of marginalisation.<< Objectives >>The WINnovators project aims to draw attention and contribute to the development of entrepreneurial, STEM/STEAM digital skills of young women at risk of marginalisation in rural and outskirts communities, promoting gender equality through concrete initiatives and actions that push for the employment of these women in innovative/advanced business that follow digital and sustainable transformation goals of societies. WINnovators wants to contribute to the transformation of the educational practices in Higher Education, to provide students with concrete instruments and experiences to act as the capacity developing agents in their communities and create an actual value as part of their HEI learning practices. This will be ensured through specific capacity building actions that will see the participation of underrepresented young people (women), teachers and students from the universities, business incubators, open innovation ecosystems and local communities. In the long run the WINnovators project contributes to the increase of female innovators in Europe and to change the teaching practices of educators in HEIs towards capacity building goals for the communities.Therefore, the WINnovators’ MAIN OBJECTIVE is to co-develop and implement, in cooperation with the Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) and the Open Innovation Ecosystems (OIE) in the consortium, innovative teaching and learning approaches and concrete policies for capacity development in the digital, entrepreneurial, STEM/STEAM innovation and sustainability fields, from which young women from rural areas and HEI students and educators would mutually benefit in the short and long run.The project SPECIFIC OBJECTIVES are:i) Develop a set of capacity building practices in teamwork across HEIs, OIEs and rural community members of partners’ countries, through their concrete involvement in the co-design activities for the development of the WINnovators Training practices Collection (PR1).ii) Develop the entrepreneurial, STEM/STEAM digital innovation and sustainability competencies of young women at risk of marginalisation in rural and outskirts communities, and the capacity of HEI students and educators to act as change agents through the development of the gamified eTrainings and e-Modules that promote innovation-led collaboration between young women, HEIs students, educators and OIE experts (PR1, PR2, PR4).ii) Build a WINnovators Community as a shared capacity mediated by the WINnovators Interactive Working Space (PR3) for teamwork (HEI students, educators, OIE experts, young women from rural communities, associated partners’ networks, educational policymakers) and supported by the shared online space on social media.iv) Involve in an international online policy-seminar policymakers from all partners’ countries, who will contribute to the co-creation of WINnovators’ policy guidelines (PR4), to raise awareness and foster also at a European policy level the gender sensitive education, and the cross communities, HEIs and OIEs capacity building training practices in STEM/STEAM, digital innovation, sustainability and entrepreneurship.To reach such objectives, the following KEY MILESTONES have been identified:Milestone 1: Co-development of the WINnovators’ Training practices Collection (Y1, PR1).Milestone 2: Development and integration of the gamified interaction with the e-Modules and platform (Y2, PR2).Milestone 3: Final release of the WINnovators Interactive Working Space (Y2, PR3).Milestone 4: Launch and implementation of the WINnovators’ eTrainings (Y3, PR4).These Milestones will be a crucial indicator in the monitoring and evaluation process of project activities, to ensure the development of high quality and impactful results.<< Implementation >>Over a three-year period, the WINnovators project focuses on transforming teaching and learning practices and establishing specific capacity building actions across the HEIs, OIEs and communities in partners’ countries, where future educators are provided with digital, STEM/STEAM, entrepreneurial and sustainability competences to jointly collaborate with young women from underrepresented groups, exercise collective capabilities and grow as future societal agents. 1) Thanks to the joint effort of project partners and associated organisations, WINnovators co-develops the WINnovators’ training practices in the FIRST YEAR (PR1). In the SECOND YEAR, the HEIs partners will pilot WINnovators’ training practices, engaging young women from rural communities, HEI students and educators, the OIEs and community policymakers. Based on the lessons learnt, the project partners compose the contents of the two WINnovators’ e-modules: “STEM/STEAM entrepreneurship communities for young women” and “Joint capacity building for sustainable futures”. The project runs the WINnovators’ e-modules in the THIRD YEAR, engaging a second sample of young women from rural communities, HEI students and educators and policymakers.- Module 1: “STEM/STEAM entrepreneurship communities for young women” engages young women from rural communities aged 18-30 with scarce employment opportunities in their areas in STEM/STEAM innovation processes, as well as in sustainability and entrepreneurial projects that promote their competencies. The aim is to help them - with the cooperation of HEI students and mentors from OIEs - to improve their innovative business approaches and service ideas that promote their careers. The second target of Module 1 are HEI students and educators from various curricula (teachers’ training, andragogy, youthwork, educational technology, programming) which will learn and moderate STEM/STEAM innovation, sustainability, entrepreneurial teamwork and design innovations in cooperation with young women from rural areas. The final aim is to build students’ and educators’ long-lasting capacities with local OIEs, open education stakeholders and communities, and provide them with concrete experiences on how to take active roles as change agents in the communities. - Module 2: “Joint capacity building for sustainable futures” engages the HEI, OIE and community policymakers in developing their knowledge and skills of the good practices and policies for joint capacity building.2) The project co-develops the gamified learning principles for HEIs, OIEs and communities cross capacity development in STEM/STEAM digital innovation and entrepreneurship projects (PR2). These gamified learning principles should motivate the young women in their pursuit to be entrepreneurial innovators and the HEI students to be change agents in their communities. The gamified approach should promote social motivation with competition and support between the teams and experts. The effects of gamification on WINnovators training and elearning approach are evaluated.3) The project co-develops and evaluates the usability of the The WINnovators Interactive Working Space (PR3) that supports portfolio-based teamwork and gamified e-learning across HEIs, communities and OIE partners. 4) From the experiences gained at running the WINnovators’ training case studies (year 2) and the WINnovators’ e-training (year 3) the project co-develops: iii) Best practices on WINnovators eTraining and Impact Evaluation (D.4.1), and iv) WINnovators’ Policy Guidelines for HEI educators and communities (D.4.1), which are widely shared during the Multiplier Events organised in all partners’ countries and during the international online seminar targeting educators, communities, organisations who work with young women at risk of marginalisation, OIE partners etc.<< Results >>The project foresees the following Project Results and corresponding outcomes/deliverables:P1 - WINNOVATORS TRAINING PRACTICES COLLECTION (leader Tallinn University)→ D.1.1 WINnovators’ Training practices Collection are described based on 6 case studies carried out by HEIs partners with the involvement of about 50 young women from the rural neighbourhoods pursuing new innovative entrepreneurial ideas and careers. The training practices will describe how capacity building may be done when HEIs and open innovation organisations cooperate and actuate for the sake of the communities, engaging young women to innovation careers and students to be change agents.→ D.1.2 WINnovators’ e-modules contain open digital micro contents (learning nuggets) about entrepreneurship, digital innovation examples, STEM/STEAM innovation approaches, design thinking canvases and collaboration scripts and capacities, competencies focused assessments which are developed based on the WINnovators’ training practices experiences. On this proposal, two e-modules are developed: “STEM/STEAM entrepreneurship communities for young women” and “Joint capacity building for sustainable futures”, that are tested with different target groups of policy makers and young women and HEI students during the project lifetime, and will remain available for HEIs and other stakeholders beyond the project lifetime.P2 - GAMIFIED INTERACTION FOR WINNOVATORS LEARNING (Leader University of Ljubljana)→ D.2.1 Game elements for the WINnovators are developed and applied during the WINnovators Online Working Space as part of the e-modules, which will provide additional motivations for informal learners and the HEI students to engage with the self-learning contents, stay active during the teamwork activities and support others. One outcome is the knowledge about the effects of game elements on learning and designing in innovation teams, which can be used by HEIs and open education.PR3 - WINNOVATORS INTERACTIVE WORKING SPACE (leader VITECO)→ D.3.1 WINnovators Interactive Working Space supports HEIs and OIEs with the currently unavailable portfolio tools and sharing space for design thinking teams. The tool also provides e-learning nuggets about STEM/STEAM, entrepreneurship, digital innovation and sustainability issues with the gamified learning approach. Such a tool is currently missing from HEIs and communities.→ D.3.2 WINnovators platform usage guidelines (video-tutorial) provide easy to understand self-training tutorials for accessing and engaging the WINnovators Online Working Space.PR4 - WINNOVATORS ETRAINING AND POLICIES (leader BADEN)→ D.4.1. Best practices on WINnovators eTraining and Impact Evaluation provide case studies on how HEIs, OIEs and communities may together change the lives of the young women at risk of marginalisation towards entrepreneurial, STEM/STEAM and digital innovation careers and following sustainability goals.→ D.4.2. WINnovators’ Policy Guidelines for HEI educators and communities are co-developed as digital whitepapers and shared in the framework of the international online seminar, which will scale up the impact to the other universities and create synergy among HEIs, and OIE stakeholders.E1-E5 WINNOVATORS MULTIPLIER EVENTS WITH POLICY MAKERS IN ALL PARTNERS’ COUNTRIESOrganised in all partners’ countries to further share and promote the results of the project, involving as many stakeholders as possible, especially across the policy makers.E6 - INSPIRED WOMEN FOR STEM & INNOVATION VIRTUAL EVENTThe event sees the participation of the young disadvantaged women involved in the eTraining sessions, who will have the chance to virtually visit several ICT companies and speak with female entrepreneurs that will hopefully act as role models and good examples of empowerment.E7 - JOINT ONLINE MULTIPLIER SEMINAR FOR POLICYMAKERSThe event will see the co-development of D.4.2. WINnovators’ Policy Guidelines for HEI educators and communities.