"<< Background >>Encouraging interest in science for youth is vital to address the shortage of scientific vocations in Europe. School science attitudes tend to be positive in primary school but decline through secondary school education. One of the main cited reasons is the mismatch between the school science curriculum and the scientific issues of interest to young people. For instance, while the experiments designed for school labs provide an excellent introduction to the scientific method's foundations, they hardly offer opportunities to understand all the scientific research steps truly. On the other hand, soft skills such as communication, work ethics, and entrepreneurship are more necessary than ever because both the market labour and the society are changing rapidly due to the so-called megatrends (globalisation, digitalisation, climate change and societal change). In this view, all European countries are implementing the European framework of Key Competences for Lifelong Learning and the European Commission encourage cooperation between different learning settings (e.g. formal and non formal education). From their parts schools are more and more participating in citizen science projects. Citizen science is an informal science activity enabling the pupils to experience an authentic scientific project and understand the environmental issues affecting their nearby environment from the perspective of lifelong learning. Regrettably, the vast majority of citizen science projects are contributory involving pupils in data collection and reporting, which fits better primary and lower secondary school educational objectives.The main barriers for the implementation of citizen science projects that involve the teachers and their pupils in all the phases of a scientific study (co-created citizen science) are:•The concerns raised by the scientific community about the quality of the obtained data and results.• Most teachers have never participated in scientific investigations. It is therefore challenging for them to approach scientists for co-designing a scientific research project.• curriculum constraints.The European Reference Framework for key competences outlines eight interdependent key competences for lifelong learning necessary to better adapt European education to the changing realities of the 21st century. Nevertheless, most educators across Europe face the challenge of finding strategies to implement these competences within the different subject areas pragmatically. The main issue is that these competences are cross-curricular and non-subject specific, while school time tables are built upon single subject lessons. On the other hand, citizen science involves aspects related to these competences as active learning inside and outside the school and collaboration with universities, research centres and communities.<< Objectives >>The Raise-CS project will tackle the issues and needs mentioned above in the frame of the relatively recent research field of microplastic pollution that is causing global ecological and human health concerns.The overall goal of the ""Raise-CS"" project is twofold: - To lay the groundwork for implementing an EU-wide citizen science programme run in a robust and harmonised manner by secondary schools, and;- To root citizen science in the European reference framework of key competences for lifelong learning with the view to integrating this practice in secondary schools curricula and use the sailboat as a motivation factor and a tool to develop interpersonal and soft skillsTo reach this goal, we have set the following specific objectives :1- To demonstrate that secondary schools can generate reliable and useful data and knowledge within the research field of microplastic pollution;2- To associate citizen science with the eight key competences for lifelong learning and integrate the activities in a cross-disciplinary manner.3- To empower science teachers to connect and actively collaborate with the scientific community.4- To build a strategic roadmap for implementing an EU-wide scale microplastic pollution monitoring carried out by secondary schools in collaboration with the scientific community and relevant stakeholders.<< Implementation >>To achieve our objectives we will:-Identify, through a literature survey, analytical methods that can be implemented in secondary school’s labs and write standard Operating Procedures -Run in-house method validation according to international standards and making use of microplastic reference materials (Operator: scientist)-Transfer of the methods to a secondary school chemistry lab (Operator: Teacher)-Realise inclusive citizen science campaigns and assess microplastic pollution using the validated methods-Present the obtained results to the scientific community-Realise environmental awareness campaigns for the large publicThe sailboat will be used in this project as a motivation factor for the students and to build bridges between formal and non-formal education.<< Results >>We will provide the following results:1- Robust Methods for assessing microplastic pollution in aquatic environments that can be implemented in upper secondary schools.The methods will be accompanied by: a- validation reports corroborating that the methods are evaluated and tested according to requirements of international standards to produce valid results b- Method transfer report corroborating that the methods are suitable for use within a secondary school chemistry lab. c- standalone training courses consisting of video tutorials with additional explanations and background information. The video tutorials are intended for teachers and, even more particularly to pupils as they might lack knowledge of equipment used in the lab. This will enable them to spend more time deepening their understanding of the procedure than troubleshooting the experiment.d- Guidelines on how to transfer any analytical methods to secondary chemistry labs.2- Guidelines on how to associate citizen science activities to the key competences and integrate them within secondary schools in a cross-disciplinary manner.3- A strategic roadmap and a catalogue of guidelines for implementing an EU-wide harmonised monitoring of microplastic pollution in aquatic environments co-created by secondary schools."

Adolescents at risk and living in deprived areas have fewer opportunities for out of school activities, informal learning and reduced access to science education. In addition, teenagers seem to have, in general, a lack of interest in Science. Besides, research showed how the social determinants of health, and specifically, deprivation and lower access to health information, have major consequences in terms of chronic diseases. Scientific literacy can be promoted through enhancing health education: health research is well-valued in the society; topics are practical and relevant, and it is important to change unhealthy habits as early as possible; self-leadership and active methods would be key ingredients. There is a need for evidence and validation of effective interventions for fostering science education and public participation with teenagers and young adults from vulnerable and/or deprived populations to raise their academic outputs, while contributing to improve empowerment in health for this group. SEEDS aims at fostering science literacy and STEM education by raising the health understanding, also pursuing the empowerment of youth in critical thinking skills, self-management and self-care through community-based public engagement, therefore improving effectiveness of health promotion interventions in this population. The multi-stakeholder participatory intervention merges the dialogue between citizen science and traditional science. SEEDS joins together the key players in science and society by applying the 4Helix model of stakeholders. Teenagers lead the process; the scientific literacy will be accompanied by a depth health education able to transform their habits, contributing to sustainable behavioural change.

UNTWIST aims to promote gender equality as a core value of the EU, defending it from the emerging threat that the oppositional gender rhetoric from extreme populist parties represents. By developing policy recommendations that uphold gender equality as both a value and a way of life, our project will contribute to shaping the global future, thus fulfilling relevant objectives in the EU’s political agenda for the period 2019–2024. By understanding if extreme populist parties are acting as niche parties, substantively representing (but also twisting) the needs and demands of citizens “at the margins”, who feel abandoned or disempowered by current mainstream feminist discourses and policies, it will co-create alternative ways of addressing those citizens. Thus, developing, and implementing new policies that can counter gender-equality-repressive strategies and the policies of extreme populist parties. Representative democracies will consequently be reinvigorated, and the citizenship empowered, by a better safeguarding of gender equality. UNTWIST’s main working strategy toward that end will consist of empowering (non-radical/populist) parties in Europe to improve their representation of the gender-based interests of the citizenry through the definition, enhancement and transfer of a policy recommendation handbook with evidence-based policy recommendations that: 1) help mainstream parties improve their substantive representation of sex- and gender-based needs and demands in ways that diminish the appeal of extreme populist messages (untwisting oppositional gender messages, particularly from right-wing populism); and 2) contributes to the widening horizon of gender expectations and overcomes current “gender fatigue” among citizens. The improvement in substantive democratic representation by these parties will decrease citizens' interest in the anti-feminist messages of radical or populist parties.

The rising trend in citizen science has led to the development of Citizen Observatories (COs) for environmental monitoring, which have been supported in FP7 and H2020. To improve the coordination between existing COs and related regional, European and international activities, the WeObserve Coordination and Support Action will tackle three key challenges that face COs: awareness, acceptability and sustainability. The WeObserve mission is to create a sustainable ecosystem of COs that can systematically address these identified challenges and help move citizen science into the mainstream. The WeObserve approach will apply several key instruments to target, connect and coordinate relevant stakeholders. The first is to develop and foster five communities of practice to strengthen the current knowledge base surrounding COs. Topics will include citizen engagement, the value of COs for governance and CO data interoperability. In co-creating this knowledge base, CO practitioners will have a platform to effectively share best practices and avoid duplication. The second will expand the geographical reach of the knowledge base to different target groups via toolkits, a Massive Open Online Course, capacity development roadshows and an Open Data Exploitation Challenge, to strengthen the uptake of CO-powered science by public authorities and SMEs. A third mechanism will forge links with GEOSS and Copernicus to demonstrate how COs can complement the EU’s Earth Observation monitoring framework. The WeObserve consortium brings together the current H2020 COs (Ground Truth 2.0, GROW, LandSense, Scent) who will actively open up the CO landscape through wide ranging networks, users and stakeholders, including ECSA, GEOSS and Copernicus to foster social innovation opportunities. The WeObserve approach and outcomes have the potential to create a step-change in EO innovation and make COs a valuable component of managing environmental challenges and empowering resilient communities.

Europe’s Research Performing and Funding Organisations (RPFOs) have a crucial role to play as agents of institutional change towards firmly grounding RRI in our society. The successful fulfilment of this challenging yet highly significant role calls for the values of RRI to be well-embedded into their governance as well as their operation with greater and more systematic participation of citizens and all R&I stakeholders. INCENTIVE is set on empowering European RPFOs to establish sustainable transdisciplinary hubs for stimulating and supporting excellent citizen science with engaged roles for all R&I stakeholders in line with RRI principles. To this end, we start by establishing and demonstrating the potential of such Citizen Science Hubs in 4 world class RPFOs covering all 4 MoRRI Country Clusters, including University of Twente (NL), Autonomous University of Barcelona (ES), Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (EL) and Vilnius Gediminas Technical University (LT). We tailor the governance and operating models of their hubs to their unique institutional specificities and regional ecosystems of R&I stakeholders, before putting them to the test to drive institutional change through a series of RRI-grounding actions conducted with and for society (citizen science, co-creation of public policies, R&I agenda setting, etc.). All in all, our Citizen Science Hubs, besides being a sustainable institutional change themselves, will serve as a vehicle for introducing substantial institutional changes in our RPFOs and their communities. We will closely monitor, evaluate and report the performance and outcomes of our Citizen Science Hubs and their actions, providing evidence of societal, democratic, economic and scientific impacts. Along the way, we will foster mutual learning and networking opportunities amongst RPFOs across Europe to share our experiences and develop practical tools to enable RPFOs to drive similar institutional changes in other contexts.