LAPASSION (Latin-America Practices and Soft Skills for an Innovation Oriented Network) is a project from the program Erasmus+ within the line KA2 – Capacity Building in the field of Higher Education (reference 585687-EPP-1-2017-1-PT-EPPKA2-CBHE-JP). It involved partners from Portugal, Finland, Spain, Brazil, Uruguay, and Chile. LAPASSION consortium had as motivation to create a unique solution to address different problems affecting youth in HEI, helping students to obtain a better training in terms of innovation, soft skills, and internationalization. This solution was achieved by means of LAPASSION MP/I (Multidisciplinary Projects/Internships) for students’ teams to help them to co-create, and co-develop projects proposed by enterprises and other organizations, or to accelerate innovative ideas in an international context involving students from several countries.The aim of LAPASSION was to increase the innovation culture of HEI and the connection with Enterprises/Organizations (E/O) with impact in Employability, and Internationalization. This aim is pursued by implementing MP/I for co-creation, co-development and acceleration of innovative ideas, integrated in the educative project of the involved institutions. MP/I was implemented by means of students' teams involving students with different backgrounds, different graduation levels, and from different countries, and solving challenges posed by E/O. The sustainability of the project is currently ensured in Brazil, Chile, and Uruguay, and can be extended to other Latin-America countries, like Colombia.LAPASSION is a consortium with 15 partners, including 13 Higher Education Institutions (4 from Europe and 9 from Latin America), 1 Association of Enterprises from Portugal, and 1 Council of the Federal Institutes from Brazil. The list of the partners is the following:Polytechnic of Porto (IPP, Portugal, coordinator)Tampere University of Applied Sciences (TAMK, Finland)University of Vigo (UVIGO, Spain)University of Salamanca (USAL, Spain)Federal Institute Riograndense (IFSUL, Brazil)Federal Institute of Triângulo Mineiro (IFTM, Brazil)Federal Institute of Goiás (IFG, Brazil)Federal Institute of Maranhão (IFMA, Brazil)Federal Institute of Amazonas (IFAM, Brazil)University of the Republic of Uruguay (UDELAR, Uruguay)Technological University of Uruguay (UTEC, Uruguay)Foundation of Professional Institute (DUOC, Chile)Catholic University of Chile (PUC, Chile)Association of Enterprises of Portugal, Commerce and Industry Chamber (AEP, Portugal)Council of Federal Institutes of Brazil (CONIF, Brazil)LAPASSION involved 7 editions (sets) of multidisciplinary projects for students plus several other additional editions not supported by LAPASSION budget (3 in Porto, 4 in Uruguay, 1 in Brazil, and 3 in Chile), in a total of 18 sets of projects.The challenges selected by the 7 original editions of LAPASSION were the following:-Santiago/Chile (2018): How to improve conditions for Senior Populations?-Uruguay (2019): How to improve conditions for children?-Uberaba/Brazil (2019): Food for the Future-São Luís/Brazil (2019): How to improve the Human Development Index of the State of Maranhão?-Manaus/Brazil (2020): Socio-Environmental Technologies for the Sustainability of the Amazon-Goiania/Brazil (2020): How to contribute to an Inclusive and Sustainable Society?-Pelotas/Brazil (2021): Accessibility and Assistive TechnologiesA total of 192 staff members have been trained by LAPASSION, and 226 students were directly involved and funded by LAPASSION for the 10-weeks experiences of multidisciplinary projects (185 from Latin America). More 211 students were trained with LAPASSION-base practices and without funding from the project during the last years.

The development of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) and specifically Internet of Things (IoT) in Argentina and Uruguay is growing at a relatively slow pace and we found the main reasons being: the lack of cooperation, the scarceness of human resources in the area of interest, and the heterogeneous thus ineffective educational methodology and offer in a state of the art topic. The aim of the project NEON is therefore to modernize the higher education system, to improve and diversify the training of human resources, both in the academic field (students, professors,) and in the industrial sphere (technical staff) and to motivate a broader spectrum of people towards IoT, which nowadays is one of the most innovative and most impactful technology in the ICT field, as it can influence and improve several aspects and processes of our lives. The main goal of the institutions that take part in the project will be the creation of a Network of Competence in IoT. This network of competence will serve as a hub and common knowledge base for both academia and industry in order to foster an improved technological advancement through exchange of knowledge and needs. Specifically, the network of competence will connect universities in Argentina and Uruguay with local industry (and with EU universities) in order to address their needs, offer teaching and training opportunities to both teachers, staff and students, improve the infrastructure through the creation of joint university-academia laboratories and offer internships. All these activities will be related to modernizing the curricula by including the IoT topic, developing new hands-on based education, acquiring digital skills and learning methods to strengthen the relation between HEIs and the wider economic and social environment fostering capacity building, innovation, creativity and employability so that to contribute to local economy growth.