There is growing evidence that health and education are closely linked and influence other parameters such as poverty and income levels. It is known that education has the power to improve not only prosperity, but it has a huge effect on health outcomes. Despite the immense benefits, health literacy remains a challenge for the European public health. Research findings refer that more than a third of the EU population face difficulties in finding, understanding, evaluating and using information to manage their health (Sørensen et al., 2015). It is also important to emphasise that nowadays, the COVID-19 pandemic is spreading around the world. Health literacy must carry a significant impact during this pandemic in order to combat the faster spread of the virus. Considering these global pandemic developments, one of the main challenges is to provide appropriate healthcare and education to migrants and refugees throughout Europe. UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi warns that the new wave of refugees arriving in Europe are living with very poor sanitary conditions, which are especially vulnerable to the pandemic. Therefore, difficult access to education and health literacy make this population extremely vulnerable. UNESCO recommends that education for health literacy should be learned in the same way as all other fields, both in formal and non-formal learning environments. Just as youngsters learn social habits that will enable them to face problems on their communities’ daily life, they must also learn and acquire the knowledge and habits of health that will enable them to achieve the highest possible degree of physical, mental and social health (Sanmarti, 1988). Health Literacy is a powerful strategy to contribute to the improvement of the population’s well-being, promoting citizenship in health, making people more autonomous and responsible for their own health and of those who depend on them and their community.For this reason, Health Without Borders project is to improve health literacy skills in young migrants, refugees and marginalised youngsters in an embedded learning perspective, while promoting a set of socio educational innovative approaches for front-line youth workers to raise awareness with young migrants and refugees about the importance of health literacy in their daily lives. Target-groups are:a) Young migrants, refugees and marginalised young people;b) Youth workers, social work specialists and non-formal educators.The key actions to achieve the aims of the project are:- Develop an innovative user-friendly Health Literacy Toolkit of Resources (IO1), which aims to foster Health Literacy skills, competences and attitudes by facilitating the access to audiovisual health information and improve their availability, while providing embedded learning opportunities. The main topics of the Health Literacy Toolkit of Resources are: (1) Digital Health Information & Social Media; and (2) Health Communication in Health Care Services, which will be embedded with (a) Multilingualism, (b) Science, technology, engineering e mathematics, and (c) cultural awareness. The resources will be built on Comics, Video Storytelling and Infographics.- Develop a front-line In-Service Training Programme (IO2) which aims to (a) present the educational resources on health literacy developed in the project; (b) better understand the principles of health literacy; (c) understand the importance of a cohesive communication strategy while working on health literacy with marginalised youth; (c) understand the principles and benefits of embedded learning environments with youth; (d) understand the principles and benefits of using comics, storytelling and gamification strategies while working with marginalised youth. - Develop a user-friendly Online Portal (IO3), aiming to (a) enable the access to all educational materials of the project in bite-sized units, according to the target-group learning needs, (b) establish a Health Literacy Repository, which will selectively disseminate projects and instruments that configure good practices in health education and literacy in the countries of the consortium; (c) facilitate peer-to-peer learning through a collaborative platform.-100 young migrants, refugees and marginalised youngsters will fully use the Health Literacy Toolkit of Resources (IO1);- 50 youth workers, social work professionals and/or non-formal educators will complete the In-Service Training (IO2)- 10 youth workers, social work professionals and/or non-formal educators will complete the short-term joint staff training event in Romania;- 20 representatives from the education and health field will be involved in the Local Working Groups;- 200 representatives from the main target-groups will attend and participate in Health Without Borders Workshops;- A minimum of 200 representatives from the main target-groups will be registered in the Online Portal.

<< Background >>The project aims to bring together the participating organisations and young people in the creation of a transnational network as an interweaving of stories and practices. The aim is to understand and tell the present, in order to build together the future of Europe, with a particular focus on sustainable development.The key words that inspired the project are1.ACTIVE CITIZENSHIP, because young people need to feel themselves as protagonists and actively participate in the life of their own community.2.ENVIRONMENT, because the challenges imposed by climate change call for immediate action towards sustainable development3.DIGITALISATION, because as the recent pandemic has shown us, there is a need for a digital shift in education.<< Objectives >>We want young people to be directly involved in social actions of sustainable development, we believe this can be done through the use of narrative techniques of digital storytelling.We also want to support the resilience of young people who are facing a moment of serious crisis and we are convinced that participation in crucial actions for the future of their community and the planet, together with the opportunity to develop their creativity can help in this.<< Implementation >>The activities that will lead to the achievement of the objectives are divided into 4 work packages:MANAGEMENT: to ensure effective management and timely coordination of the actions of the different project partners. The staff will be responsible for, among other things- coordinating the working groups - monitoring financial management - ensuring constant communication between partnersThe heart of the project will be the PRODUCTION OF PROJECT RESULTS, thanks to the joint action of the partners with the working groups.For this purpose, the project foresees a series of activities including - transnational coordination meetings - training of working groups- meetings dedicated to the implementation of specific tasks.A constant process of MONITORING AND EVALUATION will be implemented to constantly check the progress of the project. Finally, it is fundamental for the success of the project to implement a DISSEMINATION and COMMUNICATION plan that can ensure visibility to the products resulting from the activities, promote the narrative practices experimented and become part of the public debate on environmental issues.<< Results >>Through the joint action of the partners will be realized:- a Tool Kit for young operators, concerning educational storytelling activities suitable to involve young people in social actions for the environment. - Video Tutorial for young operators and young users in general on the use of storytelling methodology to support sustainable development. - Motivational videos created with the involvement of young influencers, aimed at bringing young people closer to the issue of sustainable development.- FuturEApp, an application for smartphones and PCs for the creation of narratives on sustainable development in Europe and the World. - a digital platform for narratives in support of sustainable development created by young people.The main learnings from the implementation of the results are: - increased capacity of organisations to involve young people in environmental education actions- increased capacity of organisations to act through the exchange of practices and methodologies- increased knowledge of environmental issues among participants and in their countries and organisations - increased capacity for resilience, understood not only as the ability to adapt, but also as the drive to act for change- improved capacity to creatively use different narrative techniques.

"SIMPLY INCLUDED aims to raise awareness for the need of social inclusion of migrants in(to) companies and VET and to deal with diversity in a positive way. Moreover, it will promote the idea of more inclusive work placements and enhance the willingness of companies to employ migrants and refugees, as migrants should be seen as future skilled employees. Therefore, migrants need to be empowered to promote themselves and their strengths in a proactive and individualised way which will help them to integrate into the labour market.The project builds upon the former project SIMPLE which aimed to promote the use of peer learning techniques for fostering integration of newly arrived refugees into VET. During SIMPLE we found that migrants are often not reaching their own full potential but find themselves in a harsh competition with EU born citizens. Manuela Geleng, head of the ""European Commission’s employment and social policy Refugee task-force"" points out that in terms of employment refugees need in average 15 years to catch up with EU citizens. In order to provide equal access to the labour market for everybody we need to help migrants become self-effective to attain vocational education and training and employment according to their skills. SIMPLY INCLUDED will empower and sensitize migrants to recognize their own skills and competences and enable them to compete with EU born citizens which will lead to an active participation in the labour market and a more inclusive labour market. Furthermore, migrants will learn how to promote themselves in the digital application process by using digital tools.The project will provide pedagogical tools and materials for teachers which will equip them with multicultural education methods, especially creative, critical and active cooperative learning methods preventing social exclusion of migrants in VET and later on the labour market. Companies will learn and receive information about the potential of migrants and gain a better understanding of the importance of promoting inclusive work teams. The project will finally create empathy in society and promote social inclusion. The project is designed for three different target groups: 1)Refugees and migrants2)Teachers of VET who work with migrants3)Companies and instructorsAll three groups will be involved in different activities of the project by being part of the national focus groups to contribute to the creation of the IO’s; by participating in the joint staff training C1; by being beneficiaries of the IO’s. SIMPLY INCLUDED contains the production of three intellectual outputs which will be jointly developed, produced and tested by young migrants, teachers and companies and made available to the public. Two out of three outputs will focus on video production and new technologies since it will allow an easy access for migrants who are familiar with the use of social media and smartphones instead of text-intensive outputs. IO1: a multimedia video collection. The videos will contain personal stories of migrants and companies and concentrate on the positive aspects of storytelling to transfer a strong message which will create empathy within the topic of social inclusion of migrants. It will enhance the willingness of companies to employ and work with migrants and empower migrants themselves to participate actively in the labour market. The results of IO1 will be used to implement a social media campaign for social inclusion. IO2: a toolkit for VET teachers. It will focus on the creative, critical and active cooperative learning methodology and on multicultural education and enable the teachers to prevent social exclusion of migrants in VET and later on the labour marketIO3: a videokit. It helps the users to approach the process of discovering their own potential and to present it to others by using digital tools such as an application video. The project will focus on multicultural education by using creative, critical and active cooperative learning methodology which has not been used much in VET and this transfer of non-formal methodologies into formal education constitutes the project's innovative aspect.The desired impact on the large scale will be an increased awareness within society for the importance and need of social inclusion of migrants in(to) the labour market and VET. This impact will be aspired for direct and indirect beneficiaries. Beyond increased awareness and acceptance, the target group of migrants will also become self-effective and learn how to promote their skills, especially their soft skills, in a new and efficient manner by using digital competences. This will lead to a larger variety of applications in VET and an increased quality of active participation in the labour market. These impacts will help to turn Europe into a more inclusive working and living habitat."

"InterAct is a project to promote and validate the development of Intercultural Action Competences (IAC) for participants in international youth projects. It spans the entire length of international projects, including the initial project design, web tools to practice and deepen the learning result and digital group work to integrate the learning into the daily life. To react to the Corona pandemy, InterAct will also include virtual encounters such virtual volunteering or online workcamps.What is IAC?IAC is the competence to adeptly navigate complex environments marked by a growing diversity of people, cultures and lifestyles, in other terms, abilities to perform “effectively and appropriately when interacting with others who are linguistically and culturally different from oneself ” (Fantini & Tirmizi, 2006). According to the UN universal declaration on cultural diversity (2001), intercultural competences complement human rights as a catalyst for promoting a culture of peaceful and harmonious coexistence. In that sense, they play an important role in achieving the goals of international youth work both on a global and European level. The competences that will be acquired not only contribute to the successful cooperation in international youth work, but also contribute to the role of intercultural dialogue as a positive narrative (report 2015/2139(INI)) as necessary facilitator for the integration of third country migrants. ""There is a real urgency – in many aspects of our lives – for education, which can help citizens live together in our diverse societies. For this reason we all need to develop intercultural competence. The ability to understand each other across all types of cultural barriers is a fundamental prerequisite for making our diverse democratic societies work."" (https://book.coe.int/en/root/4943-intercultural-competence-for-all-preparation-for-living-in-a-heterogeneous-world-pestalozzi-series-n2.html)What is InterAct?InterAct is a very ambitious project that will develop a complete collection of tools organised around a web based app, that offers an approach to IAC, that is both well researched and fun to use. It will allow• the young participant to dive deeper into the world of interculturality, to monitor, practice and validate their own learning progress (IO1),• the youth worker to easily integrate practical exercises, games and reflective elements into the creation of international projects, such as Erasmus mobilities (IO2),• include a policy paper to be used by decision makers to help promote and support funding of IAC and mobility projects (IO3)Why InterAct?InterAct makes intercultural action competence (IAC)• Understandable, • Measurable and• Validable.The main goal of InterAct is to transform the concept of IAC from theory to practice, to make it easily understandable for youth workers and participants alike and to make it fun to work with. ""In multicultural societies one of the central aspects of education for democratic citizenship with its emphasis on “learning and living together democratically” must be education for intercultural competence if our vision of sustainable democratic societies is to come true."" (Josef Huber, CoE 2012). The A in IAC stands for the attitudinal and behavioural component of the learning process and is crucial for the practical relevance of intercultural experiences in societies. It'sOn an individual level, it will increase the effect of mobillity participation on perceived self-efficacy, employability, self-esteem and openness to diversity. The combination of the encounter with our learning tool will deepen the learning effect on the cognitive, attitudinal and behavioral dimension.On a societal level, the dissemination of IAC will lead to an improved level of international cooperation, which is a key element for the future of the European Union and the Sustainable Development Goals. It makes our society more resilient against xenophobia and chauvinism and increases our capacity to integrate migrants.Who will use InterAct?IAC is a key competence that is required for and practiced in every international youth encounter. It contributes largely to the Competence in Cultural Awareness, but also to many other key competences. Although IAC is central to youth mobility, it is often not sufficiently understood, and learning progress in this field cognition-focussed andnot properly evaluated and recognized. Gender mainstreamingInterAct is a project that promotes equal opportunities for all. In the context of IAC, gender issues are particularly important as they help to understand, analyse and deconstruct genderrelated cultural stereotypes, that frequently get in the way of intercultural mobilities with participants of diverse gender identities and sexual orientations. As InterAct starts with amodule to integrate IAC in the project development, it will make sure that these aspects are part of the project design from the very beginning."

<< Background >>Developing migrants’ skills and having their qualifications recognised is a complicated and costly process. It also requires the ability to navigate the system and understand the appropriate training to follow. In addition, the fast changing labour market requirement, and ultimately the COVID-19 crisis had a substantial impact on the EU labour market, with many workers losing their jobs or being placed under short-term work schemes. The new Europass platform, launched on July 2020 in the context of the Updated Skills Agenda, and the EU Skills profile tool for Third Country Nationals go in this direction by giving the support to migrants to ‘showcase their skills and qualifications and facilitate their recognition through better information.’ Migrant women represent around 46% of the migrant population in Europe (Eurostat, 2018). When they arrive to Europe, they face additional obstacles to integration compared to migrant men, often having to overcome structural barriers linked to their being both a migrant and female, including facing stereotypes (EC, 2020). While migrant men usually arrive alone, women more often join as a family member at a later stage, and are not the considered as INDIVIDUALS but as a part of a FAMILY. This leads to their exclusion or limited access to integration support measures, skill assessments, trainings (Eurodiaconia, 2018:7) and with not competences, they are precluded to find good jobs.<< Objectives >>What do you want to achieve by implementing the project?*STEP UP project aims at offering migrant women the opportunity to increase gradually a wide range of skills (employability skills, transversal competences, communication skills, team working, confidence, ability for innovation, sustainability thinking), while raising their awareness on the importance of lifelong learning possibilities. Women participating in the STEP UP development program will receive tailored support based on their specific needs, ensuring continued support by the trained staff with the right set of competences. The project offer a new way to build up migrant women’ motivation for participating in upskilling possibilities, using entrepreneurial mind set and sustainability skills as an innovative way for skills identification and screening. Main objective of the project is to develop and test an all-in-one learning program to help migrant women in strengthening their employability skills, fostering their awareness on the importance of upskilling possibilities, while getting a step further toward skills and the qualification’s recognition. With the present proposal, the partners aims at -Increase adult educators’ readiness to work with migrant women and in understanding their barriers and specific needs -define new ways to support migrant women in showcasing their skills and aim at better qualification or job position -Offer a solid quality learning possibility to foster women’s competences, making them more competitive on the actual labour market -offer a new way to assess skills using EU level and widely recognised frameworks to offer skills in a way that is easy to assess and observe -increase partners’ ability to tackle some of the barriers that still prevent migrant women to access upskilling / educational possibilities -Enlarge partners’ lifelong learning offer by preparing the STEP UP program and skills assessment -increase educators’ capacity to blend both formal and non-formal education elements to offer a more flexible and tailored approach to migrant women specifically,<< Implementation >>PROJECT MANAGEMENT is carried out as an ongoing process embracing all the stages and gluing them in an organic process leading to the achievement of expected results. Under iFALL coordination, the partners will start working together since the very notification of project’s approval. Project kick off meeting will lead to the finalization of key internal resources and to the establishment of the governing bodies in charge of its delivery, as previously explained. Transnational Partners’ Meetings are held in crucial time-nodes of project implementation to ensure partners’ understanding and participated evaluation. DISSEMINATION will be carried out as an ongoing task for the whole project life, under the leadership of ENGO-MVI and the cooperation of all partners. Among the regular activities performed there is the online diffusion of information (Social Media, Website, Newsletter) and local visibility and multiplier activities (meetings with stakeholders, circulation of physical dissemination materials). QUALITY CONTROL is under the responsibility of project QM/ FRAMEWORK. The process involves actively all partners and project’s committees, participants, stakeholders and external experts involved to provide deep analysis and feedback on the prototypes and results, prior wider dissemination or usage. PRODUCTION of the project’s result. Partners will gather evidence and best practices on successful ways partners and other local stakeholder contributed to the growth of the entrepreneurial mind set, employability skills and motivate migrant women to pursue upskilling programs. In particular the partners will investigate how skills as assessed and can be described for migrant women’ advantage. The results of this phase will be, all multilingual: a training course for adult educators and trainers working with migrant women, and willing to gain new perspective on the barriers they face when searching support and upskilling possibilities; an all in one learning program to foster a wide set of skills needed by the labour market; new tools to assess and offering the possibility to certify them more clearly. During the production of the different tools, partners will also work to form a Pan-European network involving all sort of stakeholders (women/migrant associations, cultural associations, non-formal education providers, VET/HEI institutions, HR associations…) with the aim of promoting the new program and increase its visibility. TESTING The EDUCATORS manual will be tested by the partners’ educators and by at least 6 external experts with different background, while R2 the program will be tested with a group of selected migrant women that never participated at upskilling possibilities before, so they are truly say if the proposed method is working or not. The local phase of piloting will take place in all partner countries and will involve also local stakeholders and associates (as a mean for ensuring transferability and exploitation after the project end). CLOSINGA Multiplier Event per partner country is organized with the involvement of participants and stakeholders, thereby compounding dissemination of Outputs, partnership building and networking between participants and stakeholders. The project’s formal closure is needed to ensure the projects met its objectives, measure and assess impact and benefits, make sure all the project’s processes are closed and stakeholders aware of it.<< Results >>The present consortium is formed by 6 partners with different backgrounds and specialization, coming from 5 countries. Partners are promoting quality services to their end users and stakeholders, empowerment possibilities using innovation in education and training, tailored support to weak/disadvantaged categories… they all apply different educational approach for adults’ skills/competences implementation, all working using an interdisciplinary co-operation and a cross-country approach to their work. Together they aim at create and diffusing high-quality practical resources (STEP UP program, interactive resources, assessment tools, trainers manual) to be used by adult education organizations, employment services, and other organizations offering empowerment / upskilling programs to adults in line with the Europe 2020 Strategy. Outputs STEP UP ALL IN ONE LEARNING PROGRAM and assessment tools The main objective of the program is increase migrant women’s employability skills needed by the current labour market, and help them ‘showcase their skills and facilitate their recognition’ using also the EU Skills profile tool. The program is composed by the following elements: *modular short courses with interactive resources, exercises, self-assessment tools, materials for self-study or class activities in format partners will consider appropriate for the target group. *teachers’ note and outline for workshops for practical group work to offer a possibility for collaborative learning and spontaneous mentoring among participants.*instructions on how to conduct the assessment on the participants, how to validate the results, sum up a personalized assessment of the skills possessedThe practical activities will offer work-based scenarios, mock job interviews, and other realistic situation they will use to experiment their skills and competences in a practical way. This method together with the tailored support should help the participants in planning a clear career path, ensuring a real analyse of their skills and real possibility for deciding for other upskilling/vocational training. The partners are already carrying out other initiative aimed at empowering women,(migrant and EU born) and with the present proposal aim at increasing their ability to offer tailored support in a new way. The project will start with equipping adult EDUCATORS with more sophisticated skills to allow them to define the best blends among on/off-line, individual or group activities, and allowing participants to control their own timing and schedule. HANDBOOK FOR EDUCATORS AND FACILITATORS It offers educators and professionals working with migrant woman, most common barriers that migrant women still face in the actual labour market, and offers suggestions and tips to tackle them, during the learning sessions. The document offers also tips and suggestions on how to coach and motivate participants using the proposed program. The overall objective of the project, is linked also to the ET 2020 policy objective of “Promoting equity, social cohesion, and active citizenship – project participants will take part in the activities in the programme that address their personal development, focusing especially on building their self-confidence, improving attitude and behaviour, and enhancing basic skills such as communication, team working, but also ICT literacy and problem solving skills. The project is expected to have different core elements for future cooperation considered a priority of all the participating organizations and the European Union. This grassroots initiative can provide a boost to economic growth, but also mitigate the social and financial risks of migrant population in Europe, which will put downward pressure on labour supply, with negative implications for material living standards and public finances.