With high levels of youth unemployment across Europe and an ever more competitive labour market, young people leaving education are expected not only to have the technical skills required by employers but also to be well rounded individuals with the attitude, character traits and employability skills necessary to enter the world of work effectively. Yet, employers consistently report that young people are not work ready and lack some of the core basic skills employers require.Within this context Shaping Characters aimed to embed character education and employability into teaching practices, careers advice and youth work to ensure young people develop character resilience and attitudes that will empower them to take ownership of their own development and acquire character traits such as perseverance, resilience, confidence, optimism, drive, ambition, tolerance, respect, honesty, integrity, conscientiousness, curiosity and focus that will support their educational engagement and motivation.The project brought together 12 partners from the UK, Sweden, Latvia and the Czech Republic. The four secondary schools, four local authorities, three youth organisations and university brought their experience of partnership working across different sectors to develop innovative approaches and resources to ensure effective character development of young people. The project’s long term aim was to raise educational attainment and participation of young people in formal and informal learning that will provide them with the skills and attributes they will need to enter the world of work.During the project we held 6 Transnational meetings - a kick off and wrap up meeting and 4 themed events focusing in turn on 'What is character education', 'Engaging employers in character education', 'Engaging young people in character education' and 'Engaging educators in character education.' This enabled us to take an in depth look at each area, share our knowledge and experience and carry out research relevant to the theme within in each city. The key learning, best practice examples, research results and links for further information were summarised in a series of Factsheets available via the project website.In February 2017 we took 10 young people from each city (between the ages of 13 and 17) for a week long programme of character building activities in Olomouc in the Czech Republic. The young people took part in a range of activities designed to develop the character traits identified above as well as a day creating and running a virtual company. At the end of the week they presented their experiences to their peers and the visiting project partners.The project partners created an online toolkit containing 90 character building resources by the end of the project. (Items still being added with another 30 due to be available by the end of 2017). These are contained on the project website and can be used freely by any school, youth group or business looking for new ways to develop the character of the young people they work with. All project partners contributed to the toolkit and it contains a mix of lesson plans, activity ideas, questionnaires and presentations and information on how to run business mentoring programme.Within each city a range of activities took place to test the resources being developed and to promote the project results and intellectual outputs among young people, teachers, local and regional authorities, employers, NGOs, youth groups and universities.Through the Shaping Characters project, the benefits of embedding character education and employability into teaching, careers advice and youth work were promoted to 351 people involved in education and youth work who were also provided with a set of resources to enable them to do this in their own setting.459 young people received character education sessions, improving their resilience, motivation and confidence and providing them with techniques and tools to support their educational attainment and future careers. 40 young people benefitted from a week of character education activities and a unique cultural experience. All of the young people involved reported and demonstrated a large rise in confidence, motivation and aspiration which will help them during their education and beyond.Strong and lasting working relationships were forged between organisations who had not worked in partnership before in each city, bringing together businesses, education, careers advice and youth work. These relationships will continue beyond the project and should lead to future international and local projects.

Two regional authorities, three schools (two of them as associated partners), three universities and a centre of teacher training from Latvia, Estonia and Spain created a strategic partnership for empowering school teachers in the development of students’ intra-personal competencies and virtuous character. The topic, relevant in all the three countries, and specially in Latvia in the context of the recent governmental guidelines for virtue education at school and of the educational reforms introducing competence-based (including transversal competences) in school education, is addressed through an innovative multifaceted perspective, integrating the fields of expertise of each partner in closely related fields, such as philosophy for children, education for coexistence and citizenship, transversal competence development and virtues ethics.35 experts (educational researchers, program developers, school teachers and headmasters, policy makers, educational supervisors) from these 7 institutions joined their efforts during two years, in order to achieve two highly innovative and relevant Intellectual outputs foreseen: A report on best practices, expectations and needs in the field of character education in the 3 countries; and an innovative training program for supporting teachers who will act as “catalyst” for introducing these innovative practices at their schools. The preliminary research was implemented by academic partners in close collaboration with regional authorities. The practical insights of experts practitioners from schools enhanced the quality of the support program itself. The quality of the project was ensured also by the transnational dimension of the project: in addition to the regular online communication among partners, three transnational meetings and two short-term joint staff training events allowed for close scientific collaboration and deep and fluid exchange of experiences. The project has reached a large impact on more than 500 direct participants and participating organisations, as well as outside the organisations at different levels. Three multiplier events took place at the end of the project (one in each country) for disseminating the main outcomes, which are also made freely available in the website www.aretecatalyst.me. The support program is available in English, Spanish, Latvian and Estonian for facilitating local implementation and dissemination. The institutional commitment of partners is ensuring a sustainable impact of the project outcomes. The project is presented in the frame of Erasmus plus Key Action 2, “Strategic partnerships for School Education”. Duration: 24 months (01-11-2017 till 31-10-2019). Applicant: Education, Culture and Sports Department of Riga City (LV). Partners: University of Latvia (LV), Universidad de Oviedo (SP), University of Tartu (EE), Teacher and Resources Centre of Oviedo (SP), Advisory Board of Education and Culture of Asturias (SP), MTÜ Tartu Luterlik Peetri Kool (EE). Associated partners: Catholic Gymnasium of Riga (LV), Secondary school Alfonso II (SP). Total grant required: 116545 €

"100% Youth City is KA2 Strategic partnership to develop an innovative approach to new generation of City Youth friendly Policies.The project aims to create and develop a quality label ""100% Youth City"", on Youth Friendly policies city and the all certification process to implement it.Project will combine the Structured Dialogue methodology and a new and innovative tool defined by the European Union on the Lisbon Treaty, the Open Method of Coordination. Project will start with short learning activity to learn how to work with the methodology and define milestones and budget and inance procedure for the implementation of 100% Youth City.The methodology will be implemented by defining the overall key topics and subtopics, identifying priorities and a division of learning outcomes in the certification process of ""100% Youth City"", emphasizing the key role of the youngsters and decision makers in collaboration with the project partners, Youth sector, experts and policy makers designing high quality transnational seminars and putting in place a good communication practice between transnational seminars all contribute towards good coherence in the partnership.The project will gather 7 Cities recognized by their good practices on Youth policies all future and actual European Youth Capitals, are partners of this project and we gather two more cities, Valencia as a good practice on the development of long term Strategic Youth Plans and the City of Riga as good practice on inclusion and work with minorities.The structure of the project activities is the management of one short Learning activity with all project coordinators and the management of 4 Transnational seminars.Each Transnational Seminar will conclude on process of certification, or stage as 100% Youth City and start another one. Partner will have six months between each Transnational Seminar to implement the tools and necessary indicators to achieve the certification on each stage.The project will be concluded with all 7 partners with certified as 100% Youth City and all certification process on Youth Friendly Cities ready to be disseminated as an innovative, new and powerful process to have Cities with real youth friendly policies."

Title: PACT- Partnerships Achieving Communities Tackling early school leaving. Background:Community-based efforts make up the scope of this project as a way to create inclusive models for schools and communities. This is in the context of the EU2020 headline target to reduce early school leaving in 18-24 year olds to 10 % across the EU. This target ultimately led to an EU Council Recommendation (2011) on early school leaving. The Council Recommendation, together with the Council Conclusions (2015) and a number of related EU Commission documents on early school leaving, child poverty and social inclusion (2011, 2011a, 2013, 2013a, 2015), formed the basic overarching framework for early school leaving prevention in general, and also led to particular attention on inclusive systems in and around education. European cities share a focus on neighborhoods which are characterized by unstable demographic development, social tensions among ethnic groups and a challenged public services due to limited economic funds and fast changing public needs. Research shows how these factors influence everyday well-being for families, and this has a proven impact on the learning situations for children and increases the risk of early school leaving. The complexities of the contexts concerning factors for ESL are larger than what the traditional mandate of educational institutions alone can do something about. The inspiration behind creating the PACT- project was to develop new methods for increasing students well being and motivation in order to prevent early school leaving.Results:The activities and results in this project were:1. The development of a student- to- student mentorship method to support talented students in at-risk conditions 2. A development of vitue education and after school-program3. Report and video material to describe methods for community based homework programs The Nordpolen primary school developed activities to promote student identity and belonging, and these activities wiere integrated into the school as a center for the neighborhood together with parents. In Riga, there were targeted efforts to meet the children’s emotional and cognitive needs early within the primary schools. The models for support aimed to empower students through targeted municipal resources within the schools easily accessible for the teachers and a renewal of how the arts, crafts and ethics in after-school activities play a part in implementing policies for what is called virture education. These effeorts led to the development of different moduls in a virtue education program. In Rotterdam, the targeted efforts focused on “student- to-student mentorship” in the upper school levels that was established in collaboration with the Erasmus University Rotterdam. These efforts led to the development of a mentor program. The purpose with PACT was establishing flexible models for community collaborations in and around schools to motivate learning and tackle early school leaving. PACT addresses the needs of students in a holistic way (their emotional, physical, cognitive and social needs), and recognizes their individual talents and voices. Inclusive systems in and around schools particularly focus on the differentiated needs of marginalized and vulnerable groups, including those at risk of early school leaving and alienation from society. The practitioners and community particpation in the project can bring forth nuances for expert’s assessments and methods. The methods developed can have transnational transferrable knowledge. The long term impact is hope for increased community participation and possibilites for social inclusion and a sense of belonging.

The project aims to enable young people to understand, practice, and influence youth participatory budgets across European cities. The objectives are to further knowledge of already existing practices in youth participatory budgets combining the research, policy, and youth work practices; to create and put in place local policy mechanisms for participatory budgets; to develop capacity of educators to provide quality non-formal educational activities for young people on topics of youth participatory budgets; to enable local authorities to put in practice youth participatory budgets using big data while addressing digital transformation; and to ensure sustainability of project results by developing community of practitioners from across Europe.The activities will comprise Management and quality assurance (WP1); “Food for Thought”: Recipes, The Fair, The Cookbook (WP2); YUPAD Calculator and Training Curricula for Educators and Policymakers (WP3); Capacity Building for Youth, Educators and Local Authorities (WP4); and Policy and Sustainability (WP5). The results will shed light on capacity and skills of young people raised; capacity of educators to provide quality activities for young people on topics of youth participatory budgets; capacity of local authorities to put in practice youth participatory budgets using big data tools; advanced long-term cooperation between key stakeholders in all partners’ countries; political level cooperation and recognition of youth participation on local level paving the way for a systematic change towards the implementation of innovative participatory budget solutions.The impact will be directly measured on targeted groups during the project activities and indirectly on other stakeholders targeted only by communication, dissemination, networking, and sustainability activities. There will be a short impact during the project duration, which will also have effects in the medium and long-term (2 and 5 years afterward, respectively)