SMEs need more efficient and effective project management skills1. Context of the projectThe majority of the strategic activities that SMEs carry out in order to develop their business, expand their market presence or increase their efficiency and productivity could be considered as projects. However, in many cases, no project methodologies are used and people involved in leading these projects use intuitive and ad hoc methods that are often inefficient. The main reason for this is that for many SMEs the existing methodologies are complex, time-consuming and costly. SMEs prefer small-scale, short-term, one-off initiatives to long-running, costly and time-consuming projects. Research has found indications that the lack of decent project management skills is hurting productivity and profitability. Taking into account that Europe has 25 million SMEs generating 56.4% of the nonfinancial business sector (NFBS) value-added and 66.6% of NFBS employment, this is a serious problem. At the moment there is no small and simple project management method for these companies and projects, fundamental standards such as PRINCE2 and PMBOK Guide are too complex, time-consuming and costly. 2. Project partners The project partners PTCoE (Belgium), Van Hare Learning Solutions (Netherlands), Slingo Chamber of Commerce & Industry (Ireland), emcra GmbH (Germany), PMI Slovenia (Slovenia), and the Institute for postgraduate studies of the Bulgarian University of National and World Economy (Bulgaria) share the ambition to provide a solution for this issue. 3. Project objectiveThe objective of the P3.express project is threefold. The first goal is to build a simple and effective project management framework that SMEs can use to manage their projects without overburdening the organization. The second goal is to educate professionals that are involved in leading project management in SMEs about this new framework in a cost-effective way by providing accessible learning materials. The third goal is to facilitate and empower professionals that are involved in leading project management in SMEs to implement the project management framework in their professional setting while learning on the job. 4. Project activitiesTo reach these objectives the project will generate three intellectual outputs. (IO1) the P3X elementary guide. This will be a reference manual and an education material for the P3X framework, a basic project management methodology for professionals involved in managing small to medium-sized projects in SMEs. (IO2) Interactive work-based manual. This is an online platform for on the job learning that will facilitate the implementation of the framework on the learner's workplace. The tool will be a step by step interactive guide with a link to useful applications, templates, and examples that can be used to implement the framework in real-life projects while learning the framework on the job. (IO3) The P3X MOOC will be a well-formed, easy to follow eLearning course that prepares anyone for using the framework in real-life settings that is easily accessible. The methodology elaborated to achieve thises objectives follows a classical path Pooling of knowledge, Conception of the outputs, Development, Testing & validation, and Dissemination. The project will start in September 2020 and will take 25 months. 5. ParticipantsP3.express focuses on professionals who are involved in leading and managing projects in small or medium-sized projects in European SMEs. After the initial release of the intellectual outputs, the project estimates to reach 2000 active users in the first year, and yearly growth of 20% to 40% for the first 5 years. 6 multiplier events will be organized with each 40 to 60 participants and each intellectual output will be tested in small focus groups. 6. Impact The impact on individuals who participate in this project and learn P3X will be better project management skills which, in turn, will help them advance in their careers. Learners will be able to manage small and medium-sized projects in a more efficient and effective way. They will be able to implement the P3.express framework in their work and improve key competences such as organization, communication and entrepreneurship skills.By delivering a simple and SME friendly project management framework and making training accessible to employees in SMEs, this project will lead to more efficient and effective projects with better results. More efficient projects with better results lead to more profitable and thus more competitive companies that create more jobs.

"The project developed a set of digital and entrepreneurial skills for students of humanistic extraction of the European partner universities, useful to innovate the range of products and services to promote and access cultural assets in a digital key, with land branded content experiential marketing solutions and the most advanced technologies as innovation catalysts to support the evolution of digital-based services in the cultural supply chain.In recent years, cultural and creative industries (CCI) have represented an increasingly important employment basin in the EU labour market. They employ around 8.3 million people, equal to 3.8% of the entire EU force, generating an added value of around €558 bn, equal to 4.4% of EU GDP (Mapping the creative value chains. A study on the economy of culture in the digital age, 2017). In most EU countries, the CCI, even in the most acute phases of the crisis, have demonstrated greater resilience than the more traditional industries, connoting their ability to innovate and trigger spill-over effects into other sectors. Digital transformation is changing the way the public interacts with the arts and culture and the way in which the CC sectors interact with their audience. In this sense, at EU level there is a need to focus more proactively and effectively on the development of digital skills applicable to the CC sector and on the potential of these industries on the economic and sustainable growth of the EU.In line with this evidence, the project objectives were achieved by realizing the following intellectual outputs:• DESIGN OF THE NEW ""DIGITAL HUMANIST"" CURRICULUM based on three dimensions:-cognitive (learning by thinking) to be used in blended mode, mixing classroom and e-learning with the use of OER-operational (learning by doing) in on the job training, to conduct check-ups at CCIs-behavioural (learning by acting) with the creation of digital cultural communication stories• Creation of 29 OER and the relative assessment tests with Chroma Key techniques combined with motion graphics, to develop skills in students to valorise the cultural assets of the area, using the most appropriate technologies and innovation to communicate identity and local values. The OER will be made available free of charge for at least two years after the end of the project on the e-learning platform ""Erudire"" (www.erudire.it), upon registration• Design of the Handbook to create digital, cultural stories to manage all types of communication in the cultural field by applying the techniques of the territorial narration series (from web-series to sketch-coms) and the TECHNICAL MANUAL FOR TEACHERS containing the tools to use to hold workshop sessions with the students.• Creation of the DIGIT learning environment in the new and experimental form of Educational TV programme in 4 episodes linked to the 4 skills of the Curriculum that alternates sessions in the studio, in which the presenter introduces the topics, with interviews with teachers and experts and short clips videos, extracted from the ""ALICE"" series, produced and distributed by CONFORM, which act as a bridge between the informative session and the actual training session, through the use of ""Key Words"" spoken by the actors on stage and interactive elements that appear on the screen to allow the learner to access the OERs and further information materials sought and/or developed by the partnership.• Conduction by the learners of company check-ups at the CCIS sought by the partnership to analyse cultural communication processes, highlighting strengths and areas of improvement for the digital transformation of cultural contents.A 5-day virtual learning, teaching and training activity was held which involved a pool of teachers from the partnership for the methodological alignment aimed at developing the learners’ skills necessary to manage territorial and experiential brand-land marketing processes and projects. The partnership aimed at a structured dialogue between universities and the CCIs at transnational level to generate a relational, scientific and methodological capital of high added value that cannot be achieved with regional and/or national initiatives. This aspect stems from the HE transnational cooperation strategy in the CCE sector, which is strategic for EU competitiveness, as it integrates those activities that derive creativity from culture and develop services for other sectors, conveying contents and innovation to the rest of the economy generating a broad cultural ecosystem, ranging from advanced manufacturing to artistic craftsmanship. The search for and implementation of high quality standards in HE supply implies the need to cooperate and standardize methodologies to guarantee transparency/comparability/mobility of teachers and students (Bologna Process)."

Systematic and integral entrepreneurs’ literacy and numeracy training at high proficiency levels is targeted towards business management excellence and it is among priorities of EU strategy for sustainable growth, innovation and competitiveness. The screening of young entrepreneurs learning styles and identified best practices and methods used in their training will ensure insight into needed literacy and numeracy skills and attitudes of the target group and the most suitable ways of providing training to them. The challenges of proficient literacy and numeracy are particularly acute for low qualified and low-skilled young entrepreneurs in micro and small firms who strive to upgrade their basic competencies. They tend to have greater problems and also face barriers in accessing affordable training to up-skill their literacy and numeracy and take advantage of improving their business performance. The achievement of the project aims and objectives will contribute to the improvement of the entrepreneurial culture and basic skills which will enrich literacy and numeracy training in the EU through: 1. Planning and testing of literacy and numeracy entrepreneurial training which will develop the young entrepreneurs’ skills to meet future challenges in their business. 2. Develop and offer training resources of innovative methods for literacy and numeracy training. 3. Develop and support an Internet platform for distance teaching and learning which will enhance the literacy and numeracy skills of young entrepreneurs. 4. Contribute to integration of literacy and numeracy training of low-qualified and low-skilled entrepreneurs into European curricula. This objective will be achieved via effective dissemination activities and exploitation and sustainability plans of the project and its outcomes. The focus of the project is to provide a straightforward, proactive, and hands-on method to foster young entrepreneurial literacy and numeracy and to add a crucial, and sometimes missing, viewpoint to their life. By adding such perspective through basic skills training, entrepreneurs can begin to bring their business to more competitive positions. For achieving the aims of the project the following instruments will be used: screening questionnaires and guidelines for best practices identification, focus groups, analysis of styles of young learners, experimentation with teaching methods, learning materials and tools elaboration, based on results of the study, e-learning platform development, approbation, piloting and evaluation of the feasibility of the training, process of consultation with key stakeholders, continuous process of monitoring and revision in terms of ensuring quality, using of various suitable dissemination channels and means for ensuring sustainability and multiplication of the achieved results. The main innovative elements of the proposed project are: • Development of basic skills of low-qualified young entrepreneurs and common educational standards for their literacy and numeracy training; • Development of e-based literacy and numeracy training modules for young entrepreneurs; • Networking of basic skills trainers of low-qualified young entrepreneurs; • An area for young people training advance that will offer a starting point for further transfer of practices in a specific VET field. The target group of entrepreneurs - low-skilled young people, who want to start own business will be approached through own network of each partner and national and sectoral employers' organizations, dissemination and motivation events. The training platform and course developed will allow for better performance of young entrepreneurs and it will create new opportunities for employment for young people. The second target group includes managers, trainers and institutions providing training and education programmes in the field of entrepreneurship. The implementation of the project will build on needs assessment and create relevant materials and will design the agenda of basic skills training. This will include experience and best practices of all network partners.

In the Vocational Education and Training and Adult education sectors, initiatives supporting the Europeanisation and internationalisation of the stakeholders remain rare. In 2009, the European Commission envisioned education and training systems and institutions to become “more European and international” (COM(2009) 329 final). The Erasmus+ programme 2014-2020 sustains this vision through the support to projects whose goals are to “increase the capacity and professionalism of education and training institutions to work at EU/international level, and to improve the management competences and internationalisation strategies”.In this context, the project “Europeanisation” has been initiated to create an online self-assessment tool that helps education and training organisations “find out how well prepared they are for working internationally”. This tool is freely available here: www.europeanisation.eu. This tool has for objective to help educational organisations identify and remove the obstacles preventing their institutions from successful work at the EU/international level. We indeed observed in the past that educational organisations were often unable to gauge their fitness or “institutional readiness” to work at this level. In the absence of evaluation tools, many organisations overestimated and some underestimated their organisational capacities. The tool is therefore an eye-opener. Managers and other teaching and non-teaching staff members can freely and confidentially assess their organisation with regards to 7 capacity areas: (1) Mission, Vision, Culture, (2) Strategy and Management, (3) Human Resources, (4) Project Management, (5) Financial Capacity, (6) External Communication, (7) European Dimension. In these 7 capacity areas, the user navigates through 42 issues within which s/he discovers 4 situation descriptions per issue and is invited to select the description which reflects the best his/her organisation. Depending on the answers, the user finally gets an assessment report describing the readiness of the organisation to work at the EU/international level. The assessment report includes concrete recommendations of actions in the short- and long-term. Some “success stories” of internationalised organisations and tips from practitioners complete the tool. In the academic and practitioner fields, this kind of tool is usually called “Organisational Capacity Assessment Tool” (OCAT). This tool is the first European OCAT specifically targeting education institutions with the goal to assess their international capacity. The approach of the tool is not to create a hierarchy between organisations. Users do not have to reach the top level to be successful at the EU/international level. The approach is to encourage an internal improvement process for all users, precisely in the organisational capacities considered more decisive in their internationalisation process. Consequently, the tool not only is a diagnosis tool but also a learning tool. It has for overall objective to contribute to the organisational development of the education institutions using it.The tool has been elaborated for the VET and Adult education sectors. But the other education sectors can benefit from it. The tool is equally valid to organisations having no international experience and to the ones already implementing European/international activities. It can for example help applicants for Erasmus+ KA1 mobility projects in their preparation of “Internationalisation Strategies” as well as KA2 applicants in preparation of their Strategic Partnerships. But the tool is also perfectly applicable outside the context of Erasmus+ as a tutor for Europeanisation/Internationalisation. The tool is totally free of charge, compatible with any device including smartphones and tablets, and available in English, Bulgarian, Croatian, German, Greek and Hungarian. The first users of the tool have reported that the tool is “forward-looking” and “inspiring”. The impact created is that the tool “makes you think of topics you take for granted”, is “a productive way to think about their institutions” and is “useful to improve European strategies”. The expected long-term benefit for these organisations is to make their Europeanisation/internationalisation strategies more efficient and more durable, and consequently raise their overall performance.The tool has been developed by a European partnership of 7 organisations of various educational sectors and with expertise in Europeanisation strategies or organisational development: emcra GmbH (Germany, Lead Partner), the EU-Fundraising Association (Germany), the European Center for Quality (Bulgaria), the Institute for Postgraduate Studies at the University for National and World Economy (Bulgaria), the Cyprus Project Management Society (Cyprus), the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of the Csongrád County (Hungary) and the German Association-Organisation of the Danube Swabians (Croatia).

"The S.M.I.Le. - Sales Management, Inter-culture, Learning project intends to create, test, validate and disseminate, as a new educational standard, the competence dictionary of the emerging vocational profile of the Cross Cultural Sales Agent, a key figure of b2b sales processes in intercultural contexts, both in -house and on-the-field, for operations of strategic and operational commercial negotiation abroad. The expansion of reference markets in which companies compete, due to increasing globalization, implies the need to integrate intercultural aspects of ethical, juridical, linguistic, managerial, technical, communicative and negotiating nature into sales strategies that are fundamental to create the buyer-seller trust relationship and the success of sales processes in contexts different from purely domestic ones. In this scenario, characterized by the reduction of the physical distance between companies and the parallel increase in the cultural gap between them, there is a significant skills mismatch between the training supply of VET actors and the needs of businesses related to the need to develop and/or consolidate one’s business. In light of what has been shown for the context and the needs identified, the Project intends to establish a stable and multi-actor European network aiming to: • reduce the misalignment between the need for specialist and inter-cultural skills, typical of the target profile and the training supply, through a ""VET provider-business"" co-elaboration process of both the target profile and the related training programme • favour processes to acquire the competences/skills/knowledge related to the target profile by using digital teaching tools and innovative pedagogical methods, as well as practical testing, in real work situations • increase the employability of people with a higher education diploma and/or a degree in economic subjects in partner territories. These objectives will be pursued by implementing the following IO: • Cross-Cultural Sales Agent competence dictionary to promote its introduction within regional/national vocational qualifications systems/frameworks • A training programme with classroom sessions, e-learning, work-based learning and movie education, according to a blended methodological approach to develop the distinctive skills of the target vocational profile, to favour its adoption as a training model at European level • 40 people (10IT, 10EL, 10BG, 10PL) unemployed/first time job seekers with a diploma and/or degree in economic disciplines will be course beneficiaries • OER, i.e. the training pills referring to the following integrated macro-fields of knowledge/skills: - SALES - BEHAVIOURAL AND INTERCULTURAL - MANAGEMENT - LANGUAGE functional to defining proactive sales plans, as well as to negotiate and conclude win-win commercial negotiations in international/intercultural b2b contexts • company check-ups of sales processes carried out by training course beneficiaries on a sample of SMEs from their respective territorial contexts, to highlight the positive impact of the work-based learning approach on learning processes • educational short films to stage typical situations of sales processes in intercultural contexts realized by the learners at the end of the training course, which also represent the result of the implementation of movie education as an innovative methodology able to favour experience-based learning thanks to the ability to combine emotional and cognitive aspects and to activate problem-based learning processes • the ""S.AGE."" open, flexible Learning environment based on the logic of informal, social and collaborative learning that will allow access to the OER, other in-depth learning materials, tools to conduct company check-ups of sales processes and short films. The project also foresees the implementation of a short-term joint staff training event for a group of partnership trainers for Movie Education methodological alignment and technical alignment on cross-cultural selling to conduct cross-cultural Sales & Storytelling Labs The realization of these outputs, aiming to develop elevated cross-cultural skills of crucial importance for the effectiveness of sales processes and the socio-economic development of the European productive fabric, requires the activation of transnational cooperation mechanisms capable of standardizing, at European level, the adoption of didactic and methodological approaches inspired by the logic of cultural pluralism, from the definition phase of the competence set of the target vocational profile to the testing of the training model and of the resources/methodologies to support learning processes"