<< Background >>It has been over 13 years since more than half of the European Union’s population has stated that the EU conjures up a positive image in their minds.The feelings of Euroscepticism among individuals and on country level have grown significantly over time, with some going as far as decided to leave the EU. When consulting the appropriate, official info channels of the EU we can see that there are certain issues which seem to be driving Euroscepticism and driving the people towards having a more negative image of the EU. However, it is vital to take into account that misinformation has been on a rise in the past decade, with politicians and individuals spreading false information for personal gain. Taking into consideration, that not many people have been educated in what exactly the EU stands for and what it does, what being a EU citizen means, what are your rights and responsibilities, people have a tendency to automatically believe the majority of the information they are given, without questioning it or doing their own research to confirm whether what they have been told is true or not.<< Objectives >>The Europe Diverse and United Project - EDU - was developed to tackle these issues by reaching out to the most important group, the future generation. By educating young children aged between 10 and 14 about all the points mentioned above, EDU project will inspire a need for knowledge as well as fact-checking. The children will be made aware from an early age of what their rights a citizen of the EU are and how much power their voice can hold. They will be inspired to keep up to date with the developments of the EU and take a more active role in their civic participation.<< Implementation >>The project materials will be both educative and interactive and will cover two of the EU’s most important pillars: its culture and its history, as well as they will provide a wealth of additional general knowledge about the current EU. The developed materials will teach the children about the cultural diversity that can be found in Europe, acceptance and understanding of other cultures, as well as Europe’s history. They will cover the creation of the European Union, the drivers behind it, the changes it underwent in the past decades and the changes it made in the lives of its citizens.The games that will accompany each module will be useful for the children to practice what they have learned in an engaging and entertaining manner. The 'European Integration Resource Tool' will serve as a perfect source for all information about the EU and Europe so that the children do not have to go through numerous websites to find the information they need, instead, they will be able to easily access the EDU project website and they will find information of the European Union itself as well as all Member States. This resource tool will be truly innovative as it will be designed with children in mind and it will be user friendly and visually attractive. Additionally, it should be acknowledged that there is an existing EUROPA portal which is a very good point of information about the EU - however, it does not meet the needs of this project target group as it is not developed with children users in mind.<< Results >>The Europe Diverse and United Project aims to educate the children from and early age about the country they live in and what that means as part of the European Union. The produced project materials will inform them about their rights and responsibilities so that they will be able to understand what it truly means to be an EU citizen. The aim of the project is to highlight the importance of Europe's diversity and all the different cultures it contains whilst at the same time also appreciating how all the different people come together under the European Union umbrella and make decisions together which benefit the whole community. By achieving a better understanding of the different facets of Europe and how the European Union functions and the roles that citizens play in the decision-making process, the Europe Diverse and United projects aim to encourage the target group to become more active citizens in their civic duties by keeping up to date with the news, events, and changes and coming to action when the need calls during voting periods and other events in which EU citizens are called to participate in. The project will help the younger generations understand their rights, duties and responsibilities as EU citizens and also the power they hold to make a change by being a more active civic participants.

"The initiative wants to transfer and adapt a model of promotion of entrepreneurship and entrepreneurship education based on the key concept that education, and in this case entrepreneurship education, happens everywhere, particularly in those environments in which children and young people receives first education (family, school, local community). The original project was developed in Extremadura and has involved 38 AMPAs (parents’ associations) teaching them basic concepts and methodologies so that they help their children to be more entrepreneurial. With that focus that entrepreneurship education has to be ""taught"" at school and outside school, that is as a formal and non formal education transversal content, the aim of this project is that parents, trainers, youth workers, public authorities have to receive a basic training to enhance and facilitate (as facilitators) the talent of young people, whether they still are students or not, so that they all acquire basic and transversal entrepreneurial skills. If these environments and their operators are not ready to transfer entrepreneurial competences, skills and knowledge, young people will not be able to start thinking, acting and seeing themselves as entrepreneurial EU citizens. Therefore the consortium is made of 7 partners that ensure reach to local community actors (Public Authority in charge of local policy for employment and entrepreneurship), one European network representing one of the target group (teachers), two experts organizations on the topic of entrepreneurship education, a technical partner in charge of the networking and e-learning platform, a partner with experience in research and analysis and the last partner with wide experience and representation of training activity for community actors, operators (families, teachers, social workers). The structure of the project that will last for 24 months will be based on five phases. The first one will be an analysis and research work to better understand context and needs of local community actors with regard to entrepreneurship. The second step will focus on project implementation mainly through the transfer and adaptation of original project to new target group. The third phase will consist on two sets of the new training pilot sessions, first at national level and then at European level, taking into account between the two sessions applicability of contents of first session to the daily work of participants and adaptation to real detected needs for the second one. The pilot test will be a training the trainers activity. The programme will include different contents (concepts, techniques and tools, alternative education references, entrepreneurship examples, etc.) that will be addressed through a learning by doing method. All the contents developed for, during and after the pilot sessions will be available for any EU stakeholder through a social platform. It will be the channel used for a repository of lessons, tools, videos, and exercises making the experience of the target group lasting even after the pilot phase. Each partner will also host a final dissemination event to make public the results of the two-years project so that any local, regional or national entity is able to exploit this EU-shared knowledge. We expect several impacts for the project. The direct impact on the community operators participating in the trainings will be partly intangible (motivation, awareness) and partly tangible (knowledge acquisition, posterior use of the techniques learnt for their daily work). Their belonging organisation will gain new insight in how to stimulate entrepreneurial spirit in young people and also in the overall community. The local/regional community of each partner/participant will also be more aware of the need to work on new approaches towards entrepreneurship. The partners will improve internal competences making them able to exploit project results and outputs to expand their field of activity. The indirect target groups include families, school teachers, children and young people, but also policy makers, by having a community aware of the importance of entrepreneurship for all. The VET sector and trainers will also be reached."

EU is founded on “unity in diversity”: diversity of cultures, religions, custom, beliefs and languages. According to Eurostat, from 2016, over 35 million of people living in EU Member States were born outside EU. Most of these people that moved from one country to another have settled families where more than one cultural background is experienced in daily life. However, the children of such families are treated differently and often emerge some problem areas related with the integration of these children at school, concerning both language and educational aspects.For this reason, the project MULTICULTURAL SCHOOLS targeted lack of support in adopting new strategies and practices for teachers on capitalisation on cultural diversity in the classroom as, unfortunately, teachers are not prepared on how to adequately integrate these children and how to approach them during their educational path.Thus, the GENERAL OBJECTIVE of this project was to address lack of appropriate skills and competences of teachers on how to deal with multicultural classes and in the same time strengthen profile of teachers, helping them in solving out difficult situations with children coming from different religious and ethnic groups. The SPECIFIC OBJECTIVES of this project were:-to develop handbook containing new methodology on how to deal with multiculturalism at schools;-to prepare an online e-course enabling teachers to acquire new competencies;-to provide ready-to-use materials for teachers to be used in multicultural classrooms for children among 6-13 years;-to promote, preserve and enhance cultural richness of European society.To reach these goals, the project partnership, consisting of organisations from Poland, Italy, Belgium, Greece and Spain (3 universities, each having different focus, 1 SME, 1 European association of teachers, 1 PA in charge for education) have merged their collective experience and specific skills in the field of multicultural education. The project firstly produced O1 - REPORT ON THE CHALLENGES FACED BY TEACHERS IN THEIR EDUCATIONAL WORK, that worked as the basis for further outputs, to clarify on which areas the project should in particularly focus. In order to reinforce collaboration among teachers and parents, the partners collected GOOD PRACTISES OF COOPERATION AMONG SCHOOLS AND MULTICULTURAL PARENTS (O5) giving real examples to be taken as inspirations.As the key output, the project provided teachers with O4 - TEACHER’S HANDBOOK ON CULTURALLY INCLUSIVE EDUCATION, based on Q&A model, giving suggestions on different situations the teachers of multicultural classes may face. The handbook was developed in six European languages (EN, PL, ES, IT, FR, GR). This output refers to O3 - REPOSITORY OF ACTIVITIES FOR TEACHERS, containing resources, activities and materials ready-to-use in multicultural classes.The handbook has an online extension and was transformed into PROBLEM-BASED-LEARNING E-COURSE FOR TEACHERS (O7) that has the possibility to release certificates after successful completion.In addition, ONLINE NETWORKING & LEARNING PLATFORM (O6) enabling networking and exchanging hands-on experiences through discussion groups of teachers, educators and parents was created.The main impact of the project:•number of downloaded materials of repository (O3) – almost 20.000• number of members of platform (O6) and FB group – 192 members + 226 FB members• number of e-course (O7) views - 1.681 unique views• number of downloaded certificates (O7) – more than 402 downloads• number of attendees to Multiplier Events - over 340 participants• number of website visitors – over 10.000 visitors• total number of website pages view - 47.468• average session duration on the website – 3,5 hours • number of FB likes – more than 3.050 likes• the project was shown on Spanish TV programme and Radio programme• publication of Press Release in Italian online magazine “Europa & Mediterraneo” n.49 that has thousands of subscribers• publication of article about MCS in newspapers out of partners countries, Romanian Newspapers Replica, Observator de Constanta, Centre for Education Development in Poland, Telegraf and in German Europäische Erziehung• presentation of MCS project and outputs at 15 International Conferences• 2 Poster Presentation of MCS project• 4 Scientific Papers presentedConsidering this, MULTICULTURAL SCHOOLS project provides teachers’ with new competences, responds to up-to-dated questions about multiculturalism in schools and contributes to mutual recognition of every form of cultural diversity as “a treasure” for the next EU generations.

"“While we teach we learn”(L.A.Seneca)A major challenge in STEM education relates to the experience young people have during STEM classes. Students often complain that STEM is difficult, boring and not relevant to their everyday lives. Moreover, STEM teachers require ongoing professional training on innovative educational approaches to stay on top of their subjects. To ensure concrete enhancement of students’ learning experiences and ‘island of innovation and good practice need to be extended and mainstream’ (White paper about STEM studies and careers (2011).Context:Considering the high speed of progress in the field of new technologies already applied in all sectors of society and even in new domains of the economy, the implementation of new didactic approaches is highly perceived as a priority everywhere in Europe. In this regard, as recommended in the New Skills Agenda for Europe, the evolving nature of the digital economy requires “digitally competent people who are not only able to use but also to innovate and lead in using these technologies”. Combined with good hard skills and social and emotional skills, “digital skills are now as vital as literacy and numeracy” in the digital economy and society. Towards this vision, the Communication on the Digital Action Plan, COM (2018)22final, sets out how “education and training systems can make better use of innovation and digital technology and support the development of relevant digital competences needed for life and work in an age of rapid digital change”. Education should help empower young people to articulate and engage while digital technology enriches learning in a variety of ways and offers learning opportunities accessible to all. Finally, most of the above mentioned EU policies are supported by national priorities and objectives: - Germany: the Federal Education Minister recently announced the MINT Action Plan aiming at strengthening and improving mathematics and science skills- Turkey: the 2015-2019 Strategic Plan sets some key goals appropriate for strengthening the STEM education;- Belgium (Wallonia): the regional innovation strategy is a core component of the ""Marshall Plan 4.0"""", which foresees a budget of €642m for the innovation component (2015-2019).Problems addressed:Nowadays, competence requirements have changed with more jobs being subject to automation, technologies playing a bigger role in all areas of work and life, and entrepreneurial, social and civic competences becoming more relevant in order to ensure resilience and ability to adapt to change. COM(2018)24final. Digitization affects how people live, interact, study and work. Some jobs will disappear, others will be replaced, new jobs will be created, many jobs and industries will be transformed and new activities will emerge. This makes investing in one’s digital skills throughout life of the utmost importance. COM(2018)22final. As a consequence, education system needs to adapt to this reality. Reflection paper on Harnessing Globalization (2017) recognizes that “new ways of learning, as well as more flexible training and educational models, are needed for a society which is becoming increasingly mobile and digital”. Innovation is ‘extremely relevant’ for meeting the education sector’s needs and digital technology has huge, untapped potential for improving education. Project aim and objectives:The overall aim of the project is to raise awareness on the importance of choosing STE(A)M studies for pursuing successful STE(A)M careers, especially among young students. In particular, the project aims at persuading secondary schools to integrate immersive technologies and game-based learning in educational programs and foster school teacher’s capacity to teach STE(A)M effectively. For this purpose, teachers will be adequately trained to face challenges in using innovative ICT technologies during their STE(A)M lessons.Partnership:7 Partners from 6 EU countries (DE,IT,NL,TK,CY,BE), forming a transnational cooperation partnership with a balanced geographical representation of the Erasmus+ area.Methodological approach and key outputs:Since the very beginning of the project Partners will define concrete strategies and approaches for engaging upper secondary schools and other relevant stakeholders in experiencing innovative approaches for teaching STEE(A)M subjects. Partners will set up an online teacher training programme and student will be engaged in experimenting laboratory collaborative activities on a preferred STE(A)M topic guided by their teachers.Impact and long term benefits:a. raise awareness of the importance of choosing STE(A)M studies for pursuing successful STE(A)M careersb. give school teachers innovative instruments and tools to overcome the traditional method of teaching and learning engaging students to learn while enjoyingc. support educational institutions in integrating immersive technologies and GBL for teaching STE(A)M within their programmes."