The economic crisis is leading to the creation of many micro and crafts-type of enterprises, especially among women. Not finding employment elsewhere, or worse, losing their current job, leads many women to start their own microenterprise. In addition, the vast majority of firms in EU are microenterprises. Almost 90% of all enterprises in EU are microenterprises that account for 53% of all EU jobs (EU Commission, DG Enterprise, 2014). Micro and craft-type enterprises have a huge social and economic importance and in times of crisis they are a crucial professional and social “buffer”:1) in economic downturns microenterprise are more reluctant to fire employees; 2) starting a microbusiness is often the alternative for people who lose their jobs because of the crisis.Yet, microenterprises are the most vulnerable to the crisis and are the first firms to fall victim of downturns. Many capacity constraints undermine microenterprises’ competitiveness and ability to thrive. The need to define better and more concrete training for microenterprises is best captured by official papers of EU Commission: “Identification of Future Skills Needs in Micro & Craft-Type Enterprises Up To 2020”, DG Enterprise 2011, the EU Commission calls urgently to “develop tools and skills training structures with a special focus on micro and craft-type enterprises”. When put in the context of female entrepreneurship, such need for innovative and concrete training is even more important: “Promotion of Women Entrepreneurship”, DG Enterprise, 2009 identified the following “Soft Obstacles” affecting female entrepreneurship:A. lack of access to technical and general business networksB. lack of business trainingC. Low entrepreneurship skillsIn this context CRAFT aims at developing innovative training solutions to enhance the effectiveness and competitiveness of microenterprises, especially in the context of participation to national and EU markets. This will be achieved by developing relevant training solutions and material to strengthen the capacity of existing microenterprises and craft-type of enterprises to strive in the current economic environment. At the same time, CRAFT is devoted to all those individuals who wish to establish their own micro and craft-type enterprise as a response to the crisis or unemployment. While defined for this enlarged target group, CRAFT has a specific gender focus that privileges the support to female entrepreneurship.The partnership brings together 8 partners from 6 countries and includes target groups’ representatives, HEI, VET providers and entrepreneurship facilitators: the proposal is a platform to complement each partners’ specific expertise in this domain. This composition ensures geographical coverage as well as projection of dissemination and valorisation across the EU.Partners have carried out the following activities:1. identify specific capacity gaps of microenterprises and craft-types of enterprises. The needs and issues identified by EU documents will be corroborated by a survey of at least 120 target groups to pinpoint specific training needs through Output 2 Capacity Gap Assessment2.Design innovative multilingual training content, material and web based tools for the OER3.Test and validate main training modules and content with at least 200 micro/craft entreprisesThe methodology is based on a “collate -> analyse -> develop -> test & validate -> deploy” approach and combines academic pedagogical accuracy with VET demand-driven practical approach.CRAFT is devoted to microenterprises, entrepreneurs-to-be and facilitators of entrepreneurship with a focus on female entrepreneurship. Dissemination and exploitation plans have already been drafted to sustain visibility and mainstream results, both during the project and in the 2 years after completion. Valorisation activities will reach at least 48.000 recipients in 4 years (2 years of project + 2 years beyond). Active and wide exploitation focuses on VET providers, business facilitators and policy makers at all levels of governance, from local to EU.All training courses and resources in multilingual versions will be made freely available to all interested parties through the platform without restrictions of sort. Such open attitude enables CRAFT to generate impact in the immediate term on target groups of micro-craft enterprises, entrepreneurs to be and participating organisations and stakeholders. CRAFT will also produce long-term benefits in support of -female- entrepreneurship across EU.CRAFT is fully in line with Erasmus+Horizontal Priority 1: develop basic and transversal skills (such as entrepreneurship) in all fields of training, using innovative and learner-centred pedagogical approachesHor Prior 2: enhance digital integration in training: promote access to and learning through OERVET Priority 2: increase labour market relevance of VET and reduce skills mismatches and shortages in economic sectors.

"<< Background >>“If you want to teach people a new way of thinking, don’t bother trying to teach them. Instead, give them a tool, the use of which will lead to new ways of thinking.” (R. Buckminster Fuller, Author & Inventor)Erasmus + project FCL focuses on digitalization after the COVID-19 pandemic and new and innovative ways of learning and teaching in the age of Education 4.0. The activities to be carried out for the development of digital learning resources and contents, and the use of digital learning resources developed at all stages of education and training activities form the basis of our project.According to Digital Scoreboard 2017, more and more people are moving to digital, but only one of two Europeans have sufficient digital skills. To support this, the European Commission published in 2018 ""by the Digital Economy and Society Index, digitization degree ratios EU average is 53.51%. Italy 44%, Poland 45% . In Turkey and North Macedonia digitization rate is below the EU average (10%). Bulgaria 35%, Romania (39%) have the lowest scores after Turkey on the index.The educational needs caused by the COVID-19 pandemic bring along the need for excellent computing and digital skills for both school administrators, teachers and students. The fact that our students stay at home continuously and spent their education at home away from school education is a situation that puts education authorities in a difficult situation and requires breakthroughs in this way. For this reason, our schools want to open the doors to a better digital education and help them act responsibly in this area, while also creating healthier communication ways among their students. Teachers need more schools and ideas when working with computers and digital materials.In this age which the teacher transforms from being a 'teacher' to being a 'guide', inspiration and practical experiences need to be designed for teachers. In particular, the chaos environment in education by the COVID-19 pandemic has laid a more indispensable ground for the digitalization of education. This is exactly why we decided to write the ""FCL"" project on ""Digitalization in Education"", regarding that we needed to share good practices with partnership.In April, we have decided to carry out an Erasmus + project on ""Digitalization in Education"" in line with the roadmap determined within the scope of EU 2021 targets, which is included in our institutions' strategic plan.The project, addressed to teachers of local schools, stakeholders, universities, families and students, involve nine Institutions: schools and Educational and training organizations.Needs for Target Group1- Students of High schoolsDue to inadequate supplementary supports, Ss have lack of social emotional needs, as it has been proved in the analytical report “Strengthening Social and Emotional Education as a core curricular area across the EU” (http://bit.ly/SocialEmLearning )Ss need a curriculum focused on ICT tools and which will require them to use FCL classrooms in following years at schools. It will also help them with the means to improve their opportunities for more success in the future.Needs for Target Group 2- Teachers of High schoolsTeachers at high schools always need extra international supports and trainings as well as in-service training to work effectively and to devote themselves for education in the increasingly digitalized labs and classrooms “Using digital resources for continuous professional development.” (as cited in DigCompEdu 1.4)As cited one of the most important action of Digital Education Action Plan (2021-2027),teachers and educational staff must be equipped to foster digital literacy and tackle disinformation through education and training. This should be done in close cooperation with bringing together European organizations, European technology companies and stakeholders, national authorities, education and training institutions, associated partners, educators, parents and young people.<< Objectives >>The main objectives are to fill the digital competence gap of the participants, to provide them with digital tools and make it easier to develop or update their digital competences, to develop communication and cooperation skills with EU institutions. The practical knowledge gained through this project directly covers digital tools. The project recognizes the importance of promoting partners' 21st century skills, technological skills, critical thinking skills, teamwork skills, and international awareness of teachers and students. We want teachers and students to be more involved in digital education, make a more conscious and positive contribution to digitalization, and realize our objectives that contribute more use of technology in education at the end of the project.As objectives for teachers, we aim to demonstrate what the digital competence and digital competence framework, develop competencies in web tools, increase language skills in the target language, improve communication and collaboration skills in teachers, communicate with foreign teachers for cultural interaction and sharing, improvement of the information technology skills of our teachers and students by ensuring mutual discovery of digital educational materials, help teachers to address the risks, opportunities and consequences of digitization and improvement of the participant's ability to adapt to changes.As objectives for institutions, we aim to increase the capacity of partner institutions by improving their digital literacy levels, develop the democratic educational process and active citizenship at schools; empower institutions in digital education, the ability to use Web 2.0 tools in the distance education process, communicating with foreign teachers for cultural interaction and sharing, helping institutions to address the risks, opportunities and consequences of digitization.As objectives for students, we are planning to increase language skills in the target language, provide economical, easy and fast access to educational content for students with fewer opportunities, use the benefits of digitalization to improve students' learning outcomes ;During the project process, we aim to develop a Guideline for Future Classroom as an Intellectual Output and a Digital Education Needs Analysis , Digital Education Materials and applications and e-Learning Portal. As concrete results, we plan to produce educational interactive games produced with presentations, event / idea collections, feedback on activities, ""FCL DIGITAL"" e-magazine, evaluation documents, participation certificates and web tools.In addition, we aim to make a Green Travel Plan and make a contribution to the preservation of nature using things less. With green travel, we aim to increase awareness of respecting ecology and reduce the negative effects of human beings on nature through responsible behavior and regulations. We want to reduce, reuse and recycle while travelling.<< Implementation >>The methodology in the implementation of the activities will have a collaborative and participatory path based on communication and experience sharing through 21st century educational approaches.Our project will contain a total of 5 LTT's and 2 Transnational Project Meetings.L/T/T and TPM: They include activities abroad where the participants will receive training on digitalization and share the best practices of partner institutions. Kick-off TPM- Preparing for Documentation will be held in Poland in March 2022. Participants will receive a training on ICT Tools in Learning and Training Process in Italy in June 2022. Then, Bulgarian School will host LTTA on Innovative space and time concepts concerning Future Classroom in September 2022. In Romania-Targu Jiu we will organize a L/T/T on E-safety for Teachers in January 2023.In North Macedonia we will organize ""Use of E-learning Platforms and Open Source Multimedia Tools in Education and Digitalization"" in April 2023. The participants will join the LTTA on the Gamification in the Classroom which will be held in Poland in September 2023. In Turkey, Poland and Romania we will organize Multiplier Events on ""Teaching in the Future Classroom!"" in January 2024. The final TPM-The Documentation of the Whole Project and Sharing of the experiences and outcomes will be held in Turkey to discuss the achievements, results and sustainability of the project in January 2024. Final TPM and the Multiplier event will take place at the same time in Turkey. Final TPM will last two days and Multiplier Event will last one day, so representatives of partner institutions will stay for 3 days in Turkey, in order to take part in the ME as well, as guest speakers, along with Turkish experts. Participants will explore ICT tools in a practical way. Hands-on workshops and collaborative group work will allow participants to understand and assimilate the content actively. Intellectual Output: As an Intellectual Output, a guideline (the Guide for Future Classroom) will be created with the leadership of Romanian partner to serve as an inspiration to other schools and teachers. A clear guidelines may help them to have the correct image of the Future classroom for planning and creating the future classroom. Intellectual Output will be studied throughout the project with the collaboration of partners. The topics will be distributed among all partners.The areas where partners are responsible for the implementation of the activities are: All partners will design their own proposals for the project logo, Romania will hold a logo contest using Google Survey. An Erasmus + Corner will be created in partner institutions. On the eTwinning page, a video, questionnaire, photo album, games will be created with web tools related to each event. Information will be collected with mixed teams to create e-journals, project final product and project calendar. The website of the project will be created by Bulgaria (with a eu domain name). TMPİBFL will create the project's blog and follow the posts, create and update the Twinspace page.DISSEMINATION- The toolbox for teaching and assessment of skills- Dissemination of the project in local/regional/ national media, project website, school websites, school magazines ,Erasmus Days, Artsteps Virtual exhibition, preparing certificates using teacher or certificate program, Playing Kahoot Games, some materials(Tshirts, Pencils, Cups, magnets-our logos on it etc.- Dissemination activities at local, regional, national and European level.SUSTAINABILITY:-Our Project Partners have already a very specific potential network and users who the project results will be promoted to(especially schools, teachers, students, Universities, policy makers). In addition, the project results are planned to be included in the schools where the project partners are located and in the education programs and curricula of these schools.<< Results >>The most important result will for sure our intellectual output, the Guide for Future Classroom. This output aims to bring the methodology and tool developed in this project closer to all schools that can access the project languages, by step-by-step guide for the implementation and creation of the Future Classroom.Tangible results: e-magazine (FCL DIGITAL), an e-book, a website with all materials revealing the works of the project, project logo and posters, a virtual exhibition with artsteps, promotional poster, videos and brochures, presentations, teachers wakalette platform, feedback on activities (Zumpad,videos), Twinspace page, eTwinning and European QL's, learning diaries, hands-on activities, interactive lessons, seminars, start-up and evaluation surveys.Intangible results; In short term, the project will ensure the communication on digitalization, the necessary training for the digitalization division of the personnel working in partner institutions, the transfer of education and training techniques, the arrangement of the necessary knowledge of the educational organization arrangements to be made in order to increase digitalization in schools. In long term, the project will help the partner organizations to create awareness on digitalization, achieve a suitable interdisciplinary form that ensures the full integration of digitalization into the curriculum. The experience and good practices of EU institutions will be transferred, the professional competencies of participants will increase. The project will add prestige to the institutions involved in the partnership and become one of the exemplary institutions in the field of digitalization, and increase the quality of education and academic success.All the objectives and results concerning the activities of our project are directly related to the digital tools that are the topic of our project. Since the topic and objectives of the project overlap, the results of the project will be measurable towards these objectives. The project partners are aware of the importance of the lack of technological skills, critical thinking skills, teamwork skills and international awareness, which are the most important aspects of teachers and students that need to be developed in the 21st century, and the project idea created for this problem. Participants will gain knowledge and skills for the use of digital tools needed in the digital age and will develop their competencies in this field. We anticipate that teachers and students will be more involved in digital education and a more dedicated contribution to digitalization. Technology will be used more widely in education at the end of the project. All partners are willing and ready to develop these aspects of teachers and students.Participants will participate in group work activities and workshops with colleagues from different social and cultural backgrounds. In this way, we work not only on digital skills but also on soft skills such as communicating with new people in a new environment. Participants will learn how to use mobile applications and tools in the teaching process. Through competence, knowledge and the skills gained by trainers will benefit from a new set of tools and strategies to safely develop their digital citizenship. At the end of the project, the participants will be able to use digital tools in their work, establish effective digital communication between participating teams and target groups, and become more visible at national, regional and international levels. Within the scope of combating Covid-19, our schools will make a striking contribution primarily in terms of educational materials, digital applications and programs, different teaching and learning methods and techniques involving out-of-school students and teachers.The project results will be disseminated at local, regional and European level. These activities will start disseminating our project from the beginning to the end of it."

"STEM FOR ALL aimed to encourage our new generations to find solution of globalized world's problems by motivating teachers to keep up the date and enriching their professional skills because we believed that STEM related subjects needed to be taught by engaged and enthusiastic teachers using hands-on and minds-on activities. In additonal, making Stem related subjects enjoyable and exciting didn't only help them to learn, to make connection with real life but also it became a step for anticipatory STEM career. Student engaged with basic skills in math and science as well as 21st century skills such as creative and critical thinking, problem solving,information literacy and communication. In STEM FOR ALL project we combined many methods and techniques as our methodology although we mostly used Inquiry-based and project based learning as well as active learning and Ict based learning for project activities. The objectives of project were; To broaden the STEM awareness among students, teachers, local authorities,communities and raise positive attitudes of Stem related careers. To empower the teachers' teaching profiles and build basic Stem skills hence to faciliate them use more student centered teaching styles by combining interdiciplinary teaching with the inquiry learning. To provide STEM curriculum which helped us to implement STEM activities, pilot implementation of the curriculum was practically implemented through 20 hour- course in each participant country, teachers and students tested the curriculum and manuals. To involve students with fewer oppotunities such as disability,cultural differences and economic obstacle as well as advantaged students into the STEM activities thus we we gave chance to these students to be part of the project while living STEM experiences, we took account for gender equality while involving students into the implementing stem activities . To disseminate the project results,experiences,impact as wide as possible. we set very strong partnership to materalized above objectives.Different type of organisatio strengthened our projects dissemination and impact of the project result on different types of teaching learning areas and communities ,too During the project life time, we planned 3 transnational project meetings and 4 LTT as short term joint staff training events. LTT activities took place for the 1st training in Portugal for ""Teaching STEM in the 21st century classrooms"" , for 2nd training in Sweden for ""The Role of Technology in Education and best practices of using it in our classes"" , for 3rd training in Greece for ""Innovative Curriculum and pedogogy in STEM disciplines "" and for the 4th training in Romania for ""A practical workshop for teachers and Science Fair"". The first and second transnational project meetings took place in Italy and the final meeting took place in Turkey. Many other project activities carried out in national level such as launching event, seminars,workshops, STEM conference and pilot implementation of the curriculum, celebrating World Science Day and Pi Day.With these seminars and Stem conference, educational stakeholders, public, local authorites involved in STEM FOR ALL and with the upgoing teacher training courses and seminars we ensured the project impact and results remained after the project. Moreover we are carrying out an Etwinning project not only for spreading our STEM experiences gained from our mobilities but also involving much more students and teachers into STEM FOR ALL. On our management meetings all the coordinators decided to use etwinning platform as follow up activity so we are using our e twinning project for our project's sustainabilty after its life time. we are currently adding new pages and new partners to broaden STEM FOR ALL's impact.By this way our lesson plans and stem activities are going to use by many teachers and may inspire them to produce new ones. Thanks to scientix community,they have chosen STEM FOR ALL one of the sample project, many teachers reached us to learn more about the project and wanted to collaborative with us. We will continue to work with new participants on our twinspace and continue to organize online events. Besides these,running a EU project gained us internationalizm and being tolerant to cultural differences as well as gaining us collaborating and project management skills.Our students and teachers not only educationally improved but also they lived the European values.For Romania LTT Meeting we managed to add students mobility without demanding extra budget,Students participation to this activityboosted our impact on our students .Thanks to Erasmus + programmes provided us to disseminate our project on the Erasmus Plus Dissemination Platforms thus we got chance to show our project results to not just our vicinities but to all around the Europe.We've joined international Scientix Conference and represented STEM FOR ALL as an Erasmus + project,IT was greta dissemination oppurtunity for us."

"European challenges, such as the promotion of common values of equality, democracy and citizenship, bring very demanding tasks for education as they require a (re) consideration of the role of school and teachers across Europe. Thus emerges the project NESTT - New European Settings for Teachers and Teaching, designation originating from the word nest (NEST), associated with birth, growth and space where another value is given to diversity in education, equal opportunities for school success and education, beliefs and core values of the partnership on which the project is based.This consortium, coordinated by Casa do Professor, comprises six other organizations - European Schoolnet Academy (Belgium), which is also holds the ""European Education Observatory"", which comprises thirty-four Ministries of Education, responsible for various projects, such as ""Classrooms of the Future"", Asociatia Edulifelong (Romania), with experience in non-formal education, Stowarzyszenie Nowa Kulture i Edukacja (Poland), dedicated to content development and training - and three more portuguese organizations - the Institute of Educational Communities (Setúbal), as a scientific validation partner, and the Schools Groups of Maximinos and Dr. Francisco Sanches (Braga).The main intention of this partnership was to intervene on the traditional way teachers teach, building a perspective that conceives their formation from two assumptions:i) How children and young people learn in formal and non-formal contexts;ii) How can teachers make a difference, considering the indispensable focus on their professional development.The knowledge that has been produced and continues to spread contributes, in a sustained and innovative way, to the necessary change in teaching professional development and, consequently, in teaching in schools. In fact, throughout the project implementation, new training models were sought and presented, with successful practices and results in different countries, but above all, new forms of teacher education for these new realities were envisaged.The project was developed around nine properly structured, planned and shared activities:1-Coordination, which included the set of actions related to the organization and implementation of the project;2-The transnational meetings, focused on project development, specifically i) the constitution of intellectual products 1, 2 and 3, ii) the preparation of dissemination events, the International Conference, iii) the planning of other moments of dissemination and iv ) the development of the NESTT website;3-Short events, in the course / workshop, distance or in person, were always included and taken care of by all partners; In this context, several communications were also submitted to International Teaching Training Meetings;4-The e-learning course ""Teacher Skills for the 21st Century"" gave rise to the MOOC ""Empowering Students Learning"", certified 1,155 teachers;5-The development of products 1, 2 and 3: product 1 had the main focus in the documentary ""Yes, I can""; product 2, following the review of the policies, practices and approaches used in teacher education, was published…; for product 3, ""Teaching materials and portfolio of good practices for teachers"", is also finalized;6- The availability of products resulting from the dynamization of the project, in semi-structured actions, allowed the constitution of the Hands on Practice version, which is public from the website and continues to be used, serving as a basis for partners to disseminate a new version. field of knowledge;7-The dynamization of the website allows the distribution of resources, the publication of results, the consultation of activities, the search and interaction among participants, the publication of articles; It is within this framework that the NESTT community of practice has been nurtured (https://teacherstrainning.wixsite.com/nestterasmusplus);8- Participants prepared and implemented (in) training actions for non-participating teachers to ensure dissemination; partners produced reports, including photographic evidence and attendance registration, disclosing target group, impact, assessment and results;9-The Making Learning Meaningful International Conference was a privileged occasion for the dissemination of intellectual production; This event was attended by António Nóvoa, Asunción Flores, Manuel Fernandes, Teresa Godinho, Maria Emilia Brederode Santos, Alexandre Quintanilha and, among foreigners, Marc Prensky, Auli Toon, Daniela Cuccurullo and Miquel Amor; The media partners were Agência Lusa and TSF.The activities were developed as planned, always with the purpose of reaching the established goals and honoring the commitments made with the different stakeholders."

European Commission (EC), in 2013, stated in the Report “Reducing early school leaving: Key messages and policy support” that Early school leaving (ESL) is a multi-faceted and complex problem caused by a cumulative process of disengagement. It is a result of personal, social, economic, education or family-related reasons, where schools play an important role in addressing ESL but they cannot and should not work in isolation. The disparities in dropout rate among partner countries, favor the best practices and methods exchange in the present project's context between schools placed in different countries and the contribution to tackle ESL in disadvantaged areas. The partnership in this project intent to develop different innovative approaches to help schools, students and families/parents to prevent ESL. We will work with systems, methodology and concrete tools to improve communication between school and families/parents. Project will work to improve pedagogic at schools, to enable students to have homework easier to deal with alone or together with parents. Finally, the project will develop software/App, which will collect data suitable to give schools early warning about students in danger of being an ESL. Since the project is transnational, the ability to understand cultural contexts in using developet tools, will also be an important result of the project.Proejct will conduct a joint Staff Training, where teachers and staff from partners work through developed material to get an ownership to it. Then the schools will carry out a pilot, testing all or elements of the tools to harvest experiences and necessary feedback to complete both methods, educational tools and the software.Outputs will be translated into the national languages and in English to be easily adapted to schools from other countries and disseminated through different channels, including social networks or events. Over 2000 people (students, family members and teachers) in the activity’s implementation, in order to validate the quality and effectiveness of the planned outputs.Long-term benefits will be the creation of a family engagement model at European level that effectively connects parents/carer with pupils, mean increasing families participation in their learning. By doing this, pupils’ achievements at school and adaptation to school will be better and Early School Leaving will be reduced in areas where ESL rates are high. School staff will improve their link with parents and families, their pedagogic activities and early warning system. Schools will improve their services’ quality and the link with families and local community, playing an integrator role in the society.