As pointed out in the ERASMUS+ Programme Guide, the adaptation of the Vocational Education and Training to employers’ and labour market needs is a major issue in order to ensure the relevance and the impact of VET in any territory. As a consequence, one of the priorities addressed by the Programme in the field of VET is “increasing the labour market relevance of VET provision and reducing skills mismatches and shortages in economic sectors through timely adaptation of curricula and qualifications profiles and establishment of stable partnerships between VET providers and economic actors, including social partners, development agencies, bodies in innovation systems, chamber of commerce.”Local agents involved in VET can play a major role when it comes to ensure labor market relevance of VET in their territories. Those local agents work for different organizations (local and regional authorities, VET providers, employers’ associations, chambers of commerce, workers’ unions, development and employment agencies, research institutions…) which are directly involved in designing and delivering VET at a local level (City, town, urban area, district, county, province…). Nevertheless, the lack of appropriate models and tools has prevented local agents to play the role they should play. Local agents neither share a common approach nor promote a common VET strategy in their territories. As a consequence, they are often just “implementing agents” of the policies and strategies designed at National or Regional level, without the capacity of adapting them to the specificities of their territory.To tackle this issue, project gathers the experience of one Local Partnership (the applicant, Consorcio del Pacto por el Empleo del Vinalop in Spain), one local authority (Provincia Avellino, in Italy), 2 research organizations (NOTUS in Spain and FGB in Italy), one VET provider (WISEMAR, in Germany) and a local branch of a National Education Ministry (Golbasi, Turkey).The project will produce an Intervention Model which is aimed at being a tool to be used by local agents and local partnerships involved in VET in order to ensure a rapid and proactive response to change in labour market needs by effectively prevent or solve mismatches between those needs and VET provided by agents in the territory. The Model is intended to guide local actors in its way of design, implement and assess local action plan for the continuous monitoring of labour market needs and the adaptation of VET provided. Accordingly with this porpoise, the Model will be structured in 4 parts:- Four (4) “How to” Guides. Those guides will describe the methodologies considered as more successful, covering the topics of:a) How to build a Local Partnership for the continuous adaptation of VET. b) How to monitor labour market needs and its tendency to proactively adapt VET offer. c) How to programme proactive VET locallyd) How to assess the local impact of VET. - An Implementation Toolkit. The implementation of the “How to” Guides will require the use of a set of methodologies and tools (regarding, for instance: surveys, evaluation, participative decision making, ICTs applications…). - Four (4) Case Studies. In this section, local agents will have access to the detailed description of the pilot project experiences carried out in each one of the participating territories. - Best practices dossier. In order to easy the adaptation of model to specific territorial situations, the best practices gathered in the first part of the project will be compiled in a dossier organized by topics. All the four parts of the Intervention Model (“How to” Guides, Implementation Toolkit, Case Studies and Best Practices Dossier) will be edited as a publication in will be available from the project web site in pdf format.

WeGovNow will tap into emerging technologies for effectively supporting coproduction by civic society stakeholders and collective proposition development, whereby citizens are partners as opposed to customers in the delivery of public services. By integrating a set of innovative technologies within a unified citizen engagement platform, the project will overcome the current limitations of existing digital tools for citizen reporting, e-participation, and communication between the citizen and the government. In doing so, WeGovNow will enable a new type of interactivity, enhancing and expanding the viability of and capacity for citizen coproduction in the public sector, not only in a traditional citizen-to-government dynamic, but also in an arrangement where the government informs, assists, and enables private actions, or where citizens assist one another, with IT replacing the dependency on administrations as a vehicle for collective action. Building on previous research and technology development, an ambitious programme of service process innovation and technology innovation will be pursued by a multi-disciplinary project consortium. Outcomes will be validated in three European cities. WeGovNow will offer solutions that are truly inclusive by addressing risks of digital exclusion from the offset and throughout the project’s life cycle. Legal, ethical and other framework conditions for implementing the WeGovNow approach and digital tools in day-to-day settings will be systematically explored and considered, with a view to optimising the democratic legitimacy of the WeGovNow approach and the exploitability of tangible project outputs. An evidence base on impacts will be generated through a dedicated evaluation programme, thereby adopting multi stakeholder perspectives. This will enable the development of evidence-based guidance on the further mainstreaming of WeGovNow solutions and provide directions for further research.

TARGET will initiate institutional change in seven gender equality innovating institutions (GEIIs) in the Mediterranean basin – including research performing organisations (RPOs), research funding organisations (RFOs) and a network of universities. TARGET takes a reflexive approach which goes beyond the formal adoption of a gender equality plan by emphasising an iterative reflection of progress made as well as establishing a community of practice to effect institutional transformation. Actual change is the result of increased institutional willingness and capacity to identify, reflect on and address gender bias in a sustained way. Starting point and anchor of the process is a tailored Gender Equality Plan or Strategy (GEP/GES) in each GEII. TARGET will build the institutional capacity for a reflexive gender equality policy by: developing effective tools for each stage of the GEP/GES (audit, planning, implementation, monitoring, self-assessment) to be customised to the specific institution; supporting the development of competences to conduct a gender audit, to design, implement, monitor and self-assess a tailored GEP/GES; establishing a community of practice of relevant stakeholders within each GEII; initiating an organisational learning process within each GEII which combines self-assessment with GEP/GES evaluation. The TARGET countries have been characterised as relatively inactive in developing gender equality policies in R&I. To ensure that action taken has a multiplier effect, each GEII will undertake targeted dissemination activities to initiate a national/regional discourse on gender equality in R&I. Furthermore TARGET will develop new knowledge for institutions, practitioners and policymakers based on a comparative analysis of GEP implementation and sustainability to provide a basis for effective sharing of practice in both proactive and relatively inactive countries - taking into account differences in cultural, socio-economic and political settings.