During the 2017/18 academic year, five European VET institutes worked together on an eTwinning project. This collaboration led teachers who participated to share their concerns about the professional future of vocational training and education students at European level. The youth employment rates of VET graduates in Europe are below the target set by the European Commission (82%) and countries such as Spain and Italy have high youth unemployment rates.As VET providers, we are committed to making it easier for our students to transition into the job market. Our educational institutions face changes within the context of vocational education and training, as companies demand increasingly qualified workers and, more often than not, students have a mistaken perception of an ever-changing labour market. Furthermore, we face another challenge that is quite significant in countries such as France, Spain and Italy: early school leaving. As training centres, we therefore have a very important role in making VET studies more attractive so that they become our students’ first choice, thus contributing towards fighting early school leaving. Carrying out actual projects with international companies and partners helps us provide our students with an attractive learning environment. This project promoted the use of active student-centred methodologies where students played a leading role in their learning by conducting interviews, performing analyses, using digital tools and being creative.Being part of European projects also had an impact on the professional development of our teachers, improving their methodology upon sharing teaching practices with their European colleagues. Moreover, we need to help our students get a general picture of their professional future in the job market and prepare them by developing their soft skills or interpersonal skills for the workplace to ensure job success in the retail sector. Therefore, in order to bridge the gap between the needs of Human Resources departments and the skills of our students, we decided to carry out a project that would focus on the soft skills of our students to give them a key tool to boost their employability.Our main goals were: •To promote the iconic businesses in our cities among our students.•To develop the soft skills or interpersonal skills for the workplace of our students so that they can enjoy career success in the retail sector. Five countries were part of this project: Germany, France, Italy, Slovenia and Spain. We had prior experience working together and this helped us in establishing the lines of joint action and organising ourselves during the two years we worked on this joint project together.Each centre participated with a group of students (20–30 students per group). Among them, we had students with disadvantaged socio-economic backgrounds, students who were asylum seekers and students with special needs (one of them required the assistance of an assistant teacher during one of the LTTAs). The heterogeneity that internationality, parity and the different socio-economic and cultural backgrounds of our participants brought made cohesion among the groups last over time with the help of social media.During the educational and training activities, 20 students visited other partners and 1 teacher from each centre accompanied the students. Each centre had a project team comprised of 2 to 5 members who collaborated and coordinated the project's activities and outcomes throughout the different phases we passed over the past two years. The LTTAs had the following blocks as the common thread:•Recognition, confidence-building activities among participants and organisation of international working groups. •Institutional welcome and presentation of the host centre as well as the participating centres.•Themed teaching/learning activities aimed at achieving the objectives set out for each LTTA.•Itineraries for the awareness of European culture through visits to iconic retailers in the host cities. •Presentation of the project findings to the public during the teaching/learning activity sessions. In addition, different activities were carried out over the past 2 years of the project to develop the following skills among our VET students: awareness of European culture, digital competence, autonomy and initiative, social and civic competences, entrepreneurship, business awareness, communication tools, interpersonal skills and creativity. Finally, we would like to add that this project helped to reinforce the teachers’ skills: •Interpersonal skills: the teachers involved in the project worked in a multicultural context, carrying out activities for students from different countries. •Learning to learn: the teachers were able to reflect on their own practices upon implementing new methodologies such as bringing entrepreneurship into the classrooms or gamifying learning. The most revealing outputs of this project were: •An educational game that can be found as a physical game and a web and mobile application for our students to learn—through the gamified way of learning—the use of interpersonal skills for the workplace in different situations that may arise while working in the sector. •A website, which contains the key outputs of our project including the two games: the downloadable physical game with a Creative Commons licence so it can be used by any school in Europe and access to the web/mobile app, which is particularly relevant now in the time of COVID-19, making gamified learning possible with proper social distancing. •Our freely accessible Twinspace, which provides access to the activities, posters, brochures and findings that can provide guidance to other centres that are in earlier phases of the project as well as provide guidance to educational institutions in terms of student awareness of soft skills.•A tour of the iconic shops in our cities to promote the cultural heritage related to historic retailers. Interviews of the shop owners, where the skills necessary to work in this sector have been highlighted. •A brochure on the itineraries for sustainable commerce in our cities.•A self-assessment rubric of soft skills and a poster that can be deployed in classrooms across Europe. •The results of project assessment from a survey. Regarding the main output of the project—the game on interpersonal skills for the workplace—, it can be freely used by other schools and organisations so they can download it and use it as an educational tool to teach and raise awareness of these skills. And its web/mobile app version makes it entirely accessible from anywhere on the planet, which is particularly relevant at this time when social distancing has been implementing across Europe as a measure to fight the pandemic. In terms of the project’s impact, at local level, our project had an impact on our students, teacher and schools, as well as the local organisations that helped us carry out the project. The companies we visited and interviewed realised that schools are already teaching and assessing soft skills, and so they shared their ideas on these skills that future professionals must have. This project brought together companies, shops and educational institutions, allowing them to learn from each other. At regional level, we shared the outcomes of the project with other schools as we participated in different educational and training centre networks, aside from the eTwinning platform. Over the course of this academic year and the coming ones, we will continue to refer to this project as workplace skills are demanded by the current European labour market. As the trend observed is that this will also remain true in the future, we will continue referring to the outputs of this project for a long time.At European and international level, we helped our students become active participants of European citizenship—tolerant and respectful of other cultures, ways of thinking and living, as well as understanding of the different cultural values of nations—, thus enabling them to feel closer to Europe.Lastly, it is worth pointing out that we hope to reap long-term benefits in terms of how our students for the coming years face and approach the labour market. This is because deploying the materials that are part of the outputs will affect their preparation and above all their level of awareness of workplace skills, which are absolutely crucial for their professional future.

The ever increasing demand for implementation of sustainable and innovative transportation solution in order to reach the cities service goals, dictates the need for more advance methods of procurement to address key parameters such as innovation, scalability, interoperability etc. Therefore, there is a strong need to establish a domain for understanding the public buyers’ needs and the market perspectives in this matter. SPICE will give an invaluable chance to public authorities to share their experiences of procurement of innovative sustainable transportation solutions and to learn from each other. Over a 24 month timeframe, this project will enable public procurers to form a stakeholder group. This project will gather the best practices in procurement of innovative sustainable transport and mobility solutions in three hierarchical levels; national, regional and city levels by engaging with leading European cities and regions, industry and academic institutions to facilitate sharing of their best practices and demonstration of using public procurements for innovative solutions using various instruments: PCP, public-private-innovation partnerships, market consultation, award criteria, etc. It will carry out in-depth analyses on current practices, to look into various possibilities to enable fast adoption of new technologies,and to define strategies of procurement approaches and award criteria stimulating innovation, thus forming a set of recommendations. This will assist public authorities to use this collection of best practices in a more constructive and simple manner and implement the recommendations through capacity building and knowledge transfer activities. Finally, using the project as platform, SPICE will form a number of buyers groups to work on strategies on how to plan joint, cross-border, procurement actions for their sustainable transportation projects,and–if possible– to commence planning of such actions during the timeframe of the SPICE project.

The Education and Training 2020 Strategy wishes for a challenging 6% rate of VET students involved in a mobility experience abroad, compared to the current 0,7%. ROI-MOB springs from the idea that quality can increase quantity. But what is quality? All people say work experiences abroad are useful, enriching, favour employability, development of one’s skills, etc.. What are such statements based upon? Are there any studies or statistics about that declared worthiness, or better indicators to describe it and methods to measure it, in order to search for it from the very inception of mobilities and assess it downstream, to improve quality of offer, attractiveness to participants and companies, and to provide data to better focus mobility policies on EU territories?The topic is relevant, considering that in 2014 Erasmus+ KA1 VET co-funded over 3000 projects, involving over 126000 students, of which over 66000 in company training, worth over 264 million Euro. The topic is also a complex one (mobility is useful…to whom? students? companies? “the economic system”? should usefulness be measured as to personal training and development? employability? career perspectives? salary? overall “system” competitiveness?) and impacts also on non-technical, rather social fields (families are involved, as well as psychology, soft- and cross-skills, etc.).Recent and accurate researches are available on the Higher Education side, especially on the Erasmus programme. However, it looks like no up-to-date study and statistics are available about the “Return on Investment” in VET mobility, nor apparently did anybody try to describe it with a single value, able to represent, with proper weights, the range of dimensions and factors affecting it.In the above-mentioned scenario, ROI-MOB partners believe that:- European mobility is a key factor for the success of VET in the present economic and social context.- The success of European VET mobility is not just a feeling, nor does it relate only to emotional factors: precise indicators demonstrate it.- Knowledge and usage of such indicators allow design, implementation and exploitation of more effective and efficient mobility experiences, better fitting to the need for personal satisfaction and employability expressed by participants, for added value expressed by companies, for cultural and social growth expressed by the wider community.ROI-MOB identified and tested indicators suitable to measure the benefits brought by EU VET mobility (especially for 19+ years old participants, and EQF levels 4 and higher), compared to the ‘investment’ made by involved players (participants, schools and training centres, companies), by investigating affecting factors and devising methods and tools for turning them into success factors, with the aim of:- increasing quality in learning mobility;- attracting more participants to EU mobilities;- attracting more companies available to host EU mobilities;- supporting policies for mobility either at institutional and at provider/intermediary organisation level.The project started collecting data from different stakeholders in partner territories: Erasmus+ VET National Agencies, VET providers, companies and associations, students, etc..Collected data set the baseline for the definition of tentative performance indicators for the measurement of the ROI of EU VET mobility. Based on such indicators, partners planned and run a broad investigation round, actively involving a sample of over 1.700 stakeholders, and tested indicators on on-going mobilities.Collected data have then been analysed, indicators weighted and conveyed into a single, composite, statistical figure, and outcomes presented as a comprehensive system of measurement. A final consultation round among stakeholders allowed for assessment and adjustment.Main products are:1. A survey, documenting factors that are perceived as drivers to EU VET mobility usefulness by stakeholders.2. A set of indicators for measurement of “return on investment” in EU VET mobility.3. An algorithm to measure the “return on investment” of EU VET mobility in partner territories and organisations.4. A book, available in 6 languages, collecting all the above and offering guidelines to replicate processes and measures on one’s own, plus recommendations for mainstreaming findings into mobility policies either at provider and at institutional level.ROI-MOB has been developed by a strong Consortium, gathering eight partners from five European Union countries.

"DECISO - DEVELOPERS OF CIRCULAR SOLUTIONS” aims to support the delivery of services to induce investments projects for developing circular economy at local and regional scale in the following regions: Hamburg. Northwest Germany, West Macedonia, Alentejo. This is in line with implementing the European Green Deal and the EU circular economy action plan. DECISO will accompany the actions aiming to provide assistance for promoters in the development of financial schemes/programs for projects on Circular Economy, based on the concept of Circular Economy Ecosystem (CEE), which implies mobilizing local stakeholders and, when necessary, citizens, and scaling up the results from the local, to the national and European levels. The CEE approach will make it possible to deal with economic, organizational and cultural change through systemic solutions that involve all the players in the value chain of an asset and all those who can influence, even indirectly, its value. This approach also allows reducing risks for investors, because ecosystems with all their key factors, including geographic location, cultural factors and institutional support, actively help an innovation become successful. Since the paradigm of the Circular Economy Ecosystems can be declined in different ways, based on the objective of the initiative, the local context, the type of actors and the sector, the DECISO approach will be implemented in different local contexts and topics in order to produce guidelines that can facilitate the replicability of the initiatives put in place considering all the technical, economic, legislative, and social factors that can determine the success or failure of the initiatives.

SMARTICIPATE is a data-rich citizen dialogue system, transforming public data into new intelligence, and transposing elements of intelligent ICT development to urban governance. The aim is to integrate bottom-up processes in the realm of city planning, using the full potential of citizens by sharing ideas in the co-production of decision making. smarticipate thereby transforms interaction between citizens, businesses and public administrations in the management of cities, providing a must-have tool that improves cities’ performance, leverages government-citizen relationships, reduces burdens on government via co-production of tasks, and saves money through increased efficiency of processes. As a consequence, citizens get full access to public open data and feedback on their neighborhood-related and citywide ideas for city development. This is achieved in a playful, digital dialogue based on the creation of an open, easy accessible platform. This allows government, NGOs, businesses and citizens to develop their own apps as producers and co-producers. As a result, citizens are empowered to play active roles in the public domain, to develop new tools and to generate new public services, thereby making major contributions to Europe 2020 strategies for smart, sustainable and inclusive growth in Europe’s cities. SMARTICIPATE platform contains two generic components and functions: • To create an interactive model for impact assessment with the ability to modify the modelled objects, to understand the impacts of citizen-centric urban planning; • To create a user interaction tool (web-server) that enables structured interaction with users and communities. smarticipate offers real world solutions developed and tested in Hamburg, Rome and London, that are fully effective and implementable, as well as sustainable in the long term. These three pilot city demonstrations are transferable to all cities throughout Europe, supporting a fully sustainable business model.