<< Objectives >>Our vision is for youth to feel as an integral part of the society, to increase understanding of the importance of participating and taking action as active citizens. The ultimate aim of strengthening young people's 'identity' and sense of participation in social life through awareness raising on the environmental footprint, the digital age and its proper use, and to link the needs of young people to the political arena.<< Implementation >>There are three major activities in our project. The first two have to do with development of educational material and implementation of training relevant to digital citizenship and environmental citizenship, while the other deals with the dissemination and communication of the project, and the thesis of the youth in the sectors of environment and digitalization to the broader public audience.<< Results >>It is expected to directly involve 40 young individuals in the digital training, 40 young participants in the environmental training, 90 young individuals in 8 dialogues with the policy makers and the promotion of the thesis to the general public by producing at 4 Action Plans.Through the project we expect to change the acumen and perspective of youth for civic participation, and to further strengthen them towards vigorously pursuing their positions and their trust in the democratic society.

INT-ACT focuses on intangible cultural heritage – i.e., practices and aspects of culture that shape our understanding of ourselves, our sense of belonging, and our relationships to each other and to the tangible cultural environment – as a means of bridging the past, present and future to provide novel approaches to transforming society and addressing societal challenges facing humanity at these times of epochal changes. INT-ACT does this by: 1) developing effective methods for extracting, structuring, and presenting the Emotional, Experiential and Environmental (3E) dimensions as formalised knowledge, 2) developing transdisciplinary methods of inquiry for capturing, compiling, and preserving the 3E dimensions contained in human narratives, 3) proposing and testing interaction techniques, narrative methods and audio-visual media choices for immersive eXtended Reality (XR) environments that present the 3E dimensions of intangible cultural heritage in the context of their associated tangible cultural heritage sites, and 4) providing solutions that address societal challenges by utilising these immersive XR environments. INT-ACT uses four selected tangible cultural heritage sites to develop its methods of extracting their associated intangible cultural heritage knowledge and human narratives, which are used for creating the content of four small-scale XR-based demonstrators. These demonstrators are then used in four case studies dealing with cultural, social and technological changes facing citizens and cultural heritage, namely: cultural tourism, ageing societies, disappearing communities, and immigration and multiculturalism. Each of these case studies targets a different societal challenge of importance and relevance to the multidisciplinary consortium of INT-ACT.

<< Background >>The past couple of years and due to the migration flows in Europe, Member States have been applying various policies aiming for the smoother integration of migrants. Special attention is being given for the education and training policies that plan to facilitate labor integration of the migrant population. In fact, in some cases, Member States have been forced to improve their national strategies for youth inclusion in the fields of training, labour market and society, thus leading to a positive effect on migrants’ integration as well. However, it is obvious that the current methods are not necessarily effective since youth do not find their application attractive, their needs are not sufficiently met and the motives are not convincing. Additional to that, COVID brought self-isolation measures resulting to the pause of training and social interaction, making communication and contact even more difficult and thus further delaying the integration process. The solution is suggested by the Life in EU is the relation of citizenship related education to employment and livelihood along with the use of new technologies since they can play a crucial role, bringing a valuable training to the society and enabling a paradigm shift towards citizenship activation.<< Objectives >>The ‘Life in EU’ project aims to promote active citizenship though creative learning, to strengthen labour market integration through an online motivational roadmap to employability and knowledge and recognition of diversity and promotion of tolerance through awareness raising campaign. The project is formulated as a user-centric, technology-fuelled project that aims to empower young migrants to communicate, interact, create and exchange knowledge through the use of novel learning technologies that support and foster ubiquitous, learner-centred, social and life-wide future smart training and knowledge transfer. The proposed approach aims to establish a digital learning ecosystem that targets societal needs and challenges by promoting cognitive, affective and social aspects of personalised training within informal (cultural, historic, traditoon) settings. The project is instilling augmented reality worlds of “serious games, gamification and simulations” coupled with a smart assessment capability that leverages performance-based assessment tools and machine/deep learning technologies for dynamic adaptation of the learning scenarios and environment.<< Implementation >>1.Assessment of the training needs of young migrants in understanding the cultures of the host country and analysis of the perceptions of the society through data analytics.2.Development of the training based the subjects of history, politics, social affairs, law and rights, values, religion, geography, culture and customs of the host country.3.Creating immersive workshops and performance simulations on the above thematic where multi-user groups will have collaborative virtual interactions.4.Reconstructing key cultural and historical events through storytelling to engage trainers and trainees in a virtual environment for enriched learning experience of the country values and language use through an inclusive approach. 5.Development of a roadmap to employability to assist transition to adulthood.6.Publication of a series of “dialogues” to highlight young people's views on what they want and expect from their future life in the country.<< Results >>- Collection of practices that enhanced the understating of young migrants in the topics of civic participation.- Citizenship Guide for youth workers working with migrant learners- Life in EU digital tool (app)- Dialogues of the youth residing in the EU-Training of Youth workers working with young migrants- 7 Regional Events

"<< Background >>In our rapidly changing times, research and learning practices are being advanced and transformed based on arising challenges. The COVID-19 pandemic and the multiple restrictions posed on learning practices havevaffected multiple sectors and disciplines. The need for a rapid redesigning of educational practices, which so far were dependent on physical contact, has never been greater. Various aspects of research based learning can and should be re-designed virtually, so that learners/ trainees whose learning and training activities have been disrupted due to the COVID-19 pandemic can resume productive and fruitful enquiries.In accordance with the goals set by the EU Digital Plan 2021-2027 and CEDEFOP’s assessment of the digital gap during COVID-19 for VET learners in Europe, the creation of online virtual laboratories is the way forward with benefits beyond the current crisis. VET learners whose studies programmes necessitate lab-based work, as in the engineering sector, can resume their activities and complete their studies by virtually fulfilling their learning obligations. In this context, Engineering education is an overall challenging domain, which requires adequate integration of lab experiments and use of high-quality, precision and expensive equipment. By introducing online instruments for conduction of lab-work in the engineering sector, engineering education & training can be rendered more accessible in terms of former geographical restraints for students from remote areas or other obligation keeping them away from research facilities. At the same time, learning can be scaled up and expensive equipment digitally replicated thus rendering engineering education more cost-effective. The transition of lab-based activities can therefore act as a beacon of support for VET vulnerable to career setbacks based on socio-economic background. OLEE project aims to enable this digital transition of the European engineering VET community.Therefore, some of the needs to be addressed by the project are the following:N1: Lack of opportunities for VET teachers/ trainers to get trained and certified on specific set of digital skills and way of operation regarding the distance learningN7: Outdated learning environments while VET learners would benefit from renewed learning environment, renewed interest & sector specific career skillsN7: Attractiveness of VET providers, to be able to expand their learners base by providing accessible, adaptive and inclusive distance learning services N8: Decrease of VET early leavers VET providers N9: Evaluation of the necessity of a systematic change in the education ecosystem and obtain policy recommendations, experiences and pathways so as to meet the vision of the EU Digital Education Action Plan. In this sense, the most crucial need of education stakeholders of engineering and other technical sectors to be addressed is no other than to enable them to be agents of change towards digital transformation of educational practices.<< Objectives >>The OLEE project sets itself the aim to assist VET Trainers and learners of the Engineering sector in the transition towards a digital educational & research ecosystem in the post covid-19 era. The concrete OBJECTIVES to be achieved include the following: O1: The designing and piloting of innovative online resources. In particular, delivering an Virtual Laboratory for Engineering lab-work activities O2: Reinforcing the ability of VET providers to provide high quality, inclusive digital education. O3: The promotion of networking and collaboration between EU institutions, sharing of resources and expertise O4: Support towards the VET communities for the acquisition of digital competences O5: Supporting the Engineering sector & building their resilience & digital capacity<< Implementation >>The project will be divided in 4 main Project Results with 18 accompanying activities. Moreover, an LTT activity is envisaged to take place near the end of the 3rd project result.PR1: Setting up the Online Experiments a Setting up the Online Experiments and the Virtual Labs for Technical Professions in VETPR2: Development of Training Material for embeding Online Experiments in current training curriculaPR3: OLEE - Train the Trainers PackagePR4: Development of a certification for the award of a label of ""Virtual Laboratory for educational skills in VET institutions"" In more detail these PRs will include the following activities per PR:PR1A1: Technical requirements for the Online Experiments and design of the V-Lab of Technical Professions for VET classesA2: Development of the Technical Professions V-lab for VET ClassesA3: Development of Online Experiments for Technical Professions LabsA4: Incorporation of Online Experiments as an integral part of the V-labPR2A1: Development of use case training scenarios for each of the online experimentsA2: Development of learning material based on the use case scenariosA3: Testing of Online Experiments in real-teaching environment A4: Embedding of Online Experiments in current technical professions training curricula PR3 A1: Training outline for upskiling of Trainers in the design of Online ExperimentsA2: Development of self-training material for enriching current online experiments A3: Fine-tuning of training material based on feedback A4: Upload of training material in the form of OER to the e-learning platform as part of the Online ExperimentsA5: Creation of an online community for the development of more online experiments and training resources on Technical ProfessionsPR4A1 Development of the Certification procedureA2 Development of the OLEE Certification standard A3 Testing of the OLEE Certification procedureA4: Refinement of the Certification procedureA5 Implementation of the Certification procedureLastly, other activities to be conducted during the project’s lifecycle revolve around project coordination& management as well as dissemination efforts, namely: 4 Transnational Partner Meetings and 5 Multiplier Events, on to be organized in each participating country will be conducted.<< Results >>OLEE aims to support VET teachers/ trainers and learners of the Engineering sector in their struggle to navigate the new realities posed to them by covid-19 pandemic and continue their activities in a virtual fit for the digital age. Within this context, the following outcomes, devided in tangible results (TR) and intanglible results (IR) are going to be achieved during and on the OLEE project’s completion:Tangible Results (TR) TR1: A new innovative training material will be created in OER form, compliant to DigiComp and specifically addressed to the needs of VET trainers and researchers. The training material will be available in 5 languages. TR2: Approximately 100 VET teachers/ trainers (12 that will attend the training the certification plus the VET teachers/ trainers and staff from the consortium partners) will directly benefit from the implementation of the OLEE project. TR4: An estimated 70 VET providers will benefit from the project results. It is estimated that approximately 60% of the total individuals that will participate in the DigEdu+ training and certification procedure will come from VET centers and will directly benefit from the project results and outputs.TR6: Active involvement of education stakeholders and policy makers. It is also expected that each partner will engage 2-3 additional stakeholders during the development of the curriculum and the testing of the product, adding further 12-18 indirect beneficiaries. TR7: An innovative virtual learning laboratory for the engineering sector for stakeholders to further utilize. Intangible Results (IR) IR1: Creation of a new digital education culture in which VET teachers/ trainers/learners will have a holistic approach regarding the benefits and the new pedagogical approaches in sectors known for testing the waters.IR2: VET teachers/ trainers will act as a beacon of change by not only implementing the digital education practices but also promoting them among the educational community and their learners, by supporting inclusivity and fighting in this way the VET early leaving. IR3: Creation of new technics regarding the set-up of user friendly and interactive e-learning material IR4: An overall upgrade of the e-learning experience though the better understanding of the digital education practices among the VET teachers/ trainers and the new pedagogical technics that are needed. IR5: Rendering research and lab activities more user-friendly and inclusive and less costly and unattainable for larger segment of VET learners."

"This project is addressed towards increasing the cultural experiences of young people aged 15 to 21 years of age who are not in employment, education or training who also have fewer opportunities due to social, cultural and economic obstacles, who are unable to escape this disadvantage due to, among other aspects, their comparatively low level of cultural engagement, and the way in which this translates into a disadvantage in their professional and personal lives. The project aims to provide a framework for cultural experiences for marginalised young people across Europe, to help them achieve 25 cultural experiences by the age of 25 years old. Based on the UNESCO definition and within the context of this project, the consortium broadly defines a cultural experiences as: ""An activity through which a member of the target group, willingly engages or interacts with, tangible cultural heritage, and/or natural cultural heritage, with the aim of consciously enhancing or benefiting their skills, knowledge or attitude.""Whilst adopting a European perspective throughout the project, the transnational dimension of the 25 by 25 project is highlighted and strengthened through the peer-learning and peer exchange element of the 25 by 25 Digital Platform. To be able to achieve the results of the project, a transnational project approach is mandatory. This approach will allow our target groups to understand, value and respect the different cultural and linguistic manifestations of the EU, through knowledge of the diversity of geographic, natural, social contained within shared cultural heritage and transnational experiences. Without this European-focused dimension the value of the project would be diminished. It is through peer exchange and shared approaches in all of proposed intellectual outputs, that the indirect target group will strengthen the relationship of NEET and migrant youths with European cultural heritage, and facilitate them knowing and valuing European cultural heritage, which will in turn, allow the direct target group (NEET and migrant and youths aged 15 to 21 years old) to contribute actively to its preservation and improvement, whilst also developing their own emotional and social skills, understanding the value of diversity and develop tolerant, open and flexible attitudes."