<< Background >>Covid-19 has had a devastating effect on the lives of many EU citizens. One group that has been particularly badly hit is young people. This project focuses on providing students with the skills that are highly sought-after in the labour market.In today’s global economy, future and soft skills (such as self-efficacy, self-organisation, creativity or teamwork) are increasingly important. Higher Education Institutions (HEI) need to invest in providing their students with those skills. In its “Skills for 2030” study, the OECD stresses that social and emotional skills are becoming as important as cognitive skills. The skills needed include flexibility, empathy, self-efficacy, responsibility, and collaboration. Ehlers (2020) argues that digital acceleration and increasing uncertainty in the workplace requires students to master not only specialized knowledge but also curiosity, imagination, vision, resilience, self-confidence, and self-organization. Learning must transcend disciplines and connect to real world challenges. Learning must incorporate the active involvement of learners and it must integrate societal and business challenges. By moving online, third-level education across the EU has mainly remained open. Traditional classroom learning approaches do not to work effectively for teaching soft and future skills, neither does online teaching. Start IT brings together students from six member countries to work on mobile apps in diverse, international, interdisciplinary teams to acquire soft skills, future skills, entrepreneurial skills, and IT-skills. The main horizontal goal of this project is “Digital Transformation”. The mobile apps that the students develop will focus on the secondary goal topic of “Climate Change”. The sector priority that this project focuses on is “Innovative Learning and Teaching“.<< Objectives >>The main objective of Start-IT is to build capabilities in the participating institutions to tackle skill gaps and mismatches with regards to soft and future skills and digital skills. The project aims to promote excellence in learning, teaching, and skills development. The project aims to promote internationalisation. The project aims to develop innovative practices in a digital era.<< Implementation >>50 students per year from the six partner colleges will participate in a ten-day LTTA where they will be supervised by both internal and external mentors/experts. During the LTTA, students will be assigned into teams that will be required to develop a business plan and mobile app addressing the Erasmus+ horizontal “Climate Change” goal. Each LTTA will be driven by the needs of a local business, NGO or governmental partner. The inclusion of a local partner will ensure that the apps built during an LTTA match real-world marketplace needs and will provide students with the experience of fulfilling a non-academic project for a “real-world” client. The local partner will bring climate change domain expertise to the LTTA.Examples of challenges addressed by the entrepreneurial digital solutions could be: trash separation in tourism, energy reduction in office buildings, water management in hotels and restaurants, reduction of carbon footprint of business trips, green mobility concepts for employees or citizens.<< Results >>The project will deliver a methodology, available for all, to be used for the learning of soft and future skills in higher education. The methodology will cover entrepreneurship, communication, interculturalism, critical thinking and creativity. The textbook and user manual that will be produced, as well as the case studies, will be made available for all to use. The relationships between the participating higher education institutions and with cooperating organisations will be strengthened.For the 150 students involved in each of the three LTTAs the result will be an increase in soft and future skills, entrepreneurial and IT skills. The 10 to 20 staff members from 6 Eureopaen HEIs involved there will be significant networking opportunities, the opportunity to exchange on and build teaching capabilities and learn from each other. The local partners of the 3 LTTAs will benefit from entrepreneurial ideas from the participants, improving their employer branding and PR opportunities. The multiplier events will give persons beyond the involved institutions the opportunity to learn about build soft and future skills and international, interdisciplinary project teaching.