Benefits of exercise have been shown in various populations of older adults: healthy and frail, with multimorbidity or specific diseases such as dementia and depression, and those who experience major life events such as trauma, surgery, and bereavement. In spite of these benefits of exercise, a major part of the older population in Europe does not get a sufficient amount of physical activity. The higher the age, the harder it is to be sufficiently physically active (Curriculum EUNAAPA). It is obvious that as people are getting older, it becomes more difficult for them to participate in active ageing actions. Reasons for this are emerging restricting factors as frailty, mobility problems, chronic diseases, lack of mood and motivation, and even not sufficient information. So what about those elderly people who almost or entirely are confined into their home environment? How can adapted active ageing actions and initiatives reach them and help them preserve the quality of life and level of functionality they have? WHOLE project's main objective was to promote active and healthy ageing through physical training for frail seniors and elderly people at home, using as a mean the personalized home care services provided to them by formal and informal carers. At the same time, WHOLE project equally emphasized on the effect of the physical training on wellbeing and relief of formal and especially informal carers. WHOLE project’s specific objective was to develop a basic e-learning platform for physical exercising and healthy diet at home to train formal and informal carers to use it as an integral part of the home care services they provide, specified to the prevention of functional decline and frailty among elderly people. As a first step, the stakeholder’s needs and barriers to health behaviour in general and our specific ideas were assessed in a stakeholder needs analysis including interviews, focus groups and a survey with carers and older adults. Additional research was conducted in a literature review. Based on this research and considering the expert knowledge in the partnership, the educational material (training modules) for the physical training and nutrition counselling were developed. The development of the training materials was closely related to the development of the e-learning platform, where all materials are provided free and in all partner languages. To implement the training materials and e-learning platform and validate feasibility, acceptance and adherence for older adults and carers, a two-staged pilot study was implemented. As part of the pilot study, a training for carers was organised in each partner location to train carers in the use and implementation of the program. A market and business study was conducted in all partner countries to allow a sustainable implementation of the e-learning platform and training material. The results were presented to the target group and other stakeholders in six multiplier events at the end of the project to motivate stakeholders to use and adopt the innovative platform. We reached the following impact on the target group formal/informal carers:•Free access to adult learning services in terms of a useful and high quality learning material for the implementation of physical training and healthy nutrition as part of daily care via an e-learning platform. •Enhancement of the quality and range of the work and services provided in daily care by updating the skills and competences. •Raised awareness of the importance of healthy habits. •Gratitude of carers for new ideas.•Reduced burden of care and opportunity to take a break from care giving tasks.Impact on the elderly/care recipients:•Experiences of new offers for active ageing as part of care and motivation to be as active as possible. •Support to maintain autonomous at home and avoid hospitalization by improved physical conditions.•Improved mood, confidence, health and wellbeing, energy and/or relationship with carers.Impact on organizations/other stakeholders:•Opportunity to offer new and innovative care service packages and to enrich training materials for carers.•Plans to include the program in VET, thus enriching the possibilities to qualify carers or social workers.•Possibility to share experiences with the WHOLE or similar programs in the multiplier events thus enriching the discussion and definition of best practices.•Update of the academic knowledge by the needs analysis and literature review as well as the pilot studies.The project involved 7 highly committed partners from Austria, Bulgaria, Germany (2), Greece, Ireland, and Israel and were all experts in at least one of the relevant fields of the project (care, physical activity, nutrition, and/or adult education).

The contextThe Senior Social Entrepreneuring project works one of the most important social and educational challenges in 21st century Europe – re-activating the overwhelming social and educational potential of the increasing number of experienced seniors in society to help them build capacity to serve as SOCIAL CHANGE BROKERS in these communities.There is a growing population of healthy older people with the skills, financial resources and time available to contribute to economic activity through extending their working lives, including through entrepreneurship and volunteer work, which is proven to give a positive impact on a person’s mental health. Therefore, we wanted to use the project as a platform to encourage older people to be active citizens and create social innovation as an alternative to traditional public service and furthermore becoming mentors for other potential entrepreneurs, both youth and seniors.The project objectives were to mobilize teams of seniors in participating active in the communities and beyond to build capacity among them to serve as SOCIAL CHANGE BROKERS in these communities.The project succeeded with bringing the policy needs in a strong, systematic and sustainable, yet practical and realistic way. We mobilized groups of seniors and build-up their capacity to act as ´Social Change Brokers´ in EU communities. They identified social needs and facilitated the change process towards a concrete social solution to the problem/need identified. In the capacity building process, they learned how to be a catalyst of social change by bringing in relevant stakeholders across sectors, implementing their initiative and to make their initiative sustainable.Number and profile of participating organizationsThe consortium brought together 8 partners from 6 EU countries: ´practice partners´, ´knowledge partner´ and an experienced ´quality assurance partner´. The coordinating partner was the department of Health Care in Aarhus Municipality (Denmark), while the primary target group in this department is citizens older above 65 years. The knowledge partner was INRCA, a public national organization in Ancona with the main aim of contributing to a holistic understanding of the ageing process from a demographic, social, economic and political perspective. The quality assurance partner was Working with Europe (non-governmental), who has a lot of experience regarding EU projects by helping partner organizations create innovative ideas and support the quality of the work processes and outcomes.The rest of the partners acted as practice partners; 3 non-governmental organizations, one university in England and one public corporation in Barcelona dealing with general interests of commerce, industry and services.Description of undertaken main activitiesThe activities such as project meetings and outputs have contributed to let the partners and participants be aware of what is happening around the six local communities in the project. At the capacity-building seminars a network of European seniors were established. They have learned to act as senior social change brokers and to bring social innovation in the local community. In the end, each local community group arranged a multiplier event, where they promoted their initiatives and told the citizens in their local community about the role as a senior entrepreneur and the impact of the project.Results and impact attainedThe Erasmus+ project SSE has been an important stepping stone towards understanding the importance of seniors’ active role in the local community.The impact of the project has been very positive as the seniors took the stage and they were the main stakeholders of this project and drove the activities. In our opinion the project has been a success, which is visible by the ongoing activities and the sustainability in most of the 16 initiatives.The project creates or promotes social change in different scales and with different stakes, which helps not only the senior to feel useful, but also to be useful to others, whether it is by playing music for the local communities’ elderly or by supporting and mentoring asylum seekers to include them in the community.The plan is not only to make the 16 initiatives sustainable, but also to implement the meaning of a senior social entrepreneur into the local communities, thereby securing the meaning of a senior social change broker and how to act upon this.Our participating seniors expressed their interest in a future European project, where their new senior-driven social innovation practice can be put into further use by focusing on isolation and loneliness in both rural and urban areas.It’s worth mentioning that our French partner Pistes Solidaires applied for a KA2 Adult Education project, ARTEM, this spring at the French agency and the project was granted. Their initiative began in the Senior Social Entrepreneuring programme and now it is made sustainable by their new project.

Youth unemployment is still a hot problematic European topic. On the other hand we have and especially young people have to face job and training markets that are more and more confusing referring to job offers and opportunities and also to required skills and competences that young people have to bring with them. Life makes demands and offers a lot of opportunities at the same time. So, youngsters feel overstrained and it becomes difficult for them to orientate themselves, find the right place and develop their own identity and personality. That makes it also difficult for them to generate an idea of their future life and in particular their professional life. However there are people who are working with youngsters all over Europe. They are social workers, educators, pedagogues, vocational counsellors, helpers for youngsters with special needs or heritage, volunteers of institutions and associations that work with youngsters etc. They have the task to support and to attend to young people by orientating and planning their professional way and life. But they have just little methods and tools to motivate and support young people individual and appropriate. Furthermore the different kinds of professionals are not enough networking to exchange and combine their different action strategies for a better support of young people. Therefore we started with this project to increase the vocational and social pedagogical competences of these professionals by concentrating on their existing competences. Furthermore we enabled and encouraged them to develop local cooperation systems for the support of young people from the age of 13 years on – pupils, unemployed young people, disadvantaged and disabled youngsters – to offer them assistance that includes their entire living environment on their way to a satisfying occupational and social life. We are a project consortium of 4 European project partners from Germany, Spain, Latvia and Bulgaria. We are experienced in implementing regional and international projects for and with youngsters. In this project „Work on it!“ we worked and cooperated with more than 40 local practice partners in the field of youth work from the partner countries .Methodically we relied on an intensive, cooperative and democratic teamwork with our practice partners. We determined different methods, tools and good practices, that our practice partners and target group implement in their daily work with youngsters and that are useful to support young people on their way to a suitable profession. The collection of methods and tools is the base for a handbook that should help our target group to increase their professionalism and methodical competence. We developed the handbook together with our practice partners who provided the methods and tools, tested the handbook and gave feedback for a final usable version. Also networking, exchange and cooperation between the different practice partners and stakeholders on regional and international level increased pedagogical and methodical competences. In two learning activities based on a curriculum developed during the project and also druring the multiplier events they learned together and from each other. All project outputs are available in English and in the languages of the partner countries. In this way they can be used by many stakeholders in Europe. The close cooperation with our target group during the project offers the possibility to stablish longer-term relationships beyond the project. That will lead to local network systems to support young people. And it would also result in a further development of the project outputs. In this context we plan to offer regional opportunities for further education for professionals and volunteers of youth work on the base of the curriculum. And furthermore we will offer international workshops on that topic to exploit the project results and outputs on a European level.

The economic and social crisis that Europe is facing has led to a sharp decline in economic activity and recession. The labour market is being severely hit and unemployment rates are increasing thus negatively affecting the EU’s potential growth. In this scenario, the aim is for Europe to become a smart, sustainable and inclusive economy. Inclusive means, among others, raising Europe’s employment rates and helping people with fewer opportunities of all ages manage change through investment in skills and training. Unemployment is particularly high among women and young people and this situation is exacerbated among migrant women and women at risk of social exclusion. In addition, these groups are more vulnerable because of issues related to work-life balance, limited availability for training and access to resources. The general objective of WhomeN Project is to offer new opportunities and competences to adult women at risk of social exclusion (immigrants, long-term unemployed women, young women with low level of education, single mothers, unemployed women, over-45,…) for improving their qualifications and thus their levels of employability and integration into the society, mainly through innovative methodologies of recognition of skills and competences that include transversal and soft skills. The project focuses on the development of an effective protocol for the evaluation of skills and competences based on EU guidelines for validation and recognition, ECVET and EQAVET tools. This will allow a further professionalization of occupations commonly carried out by women at risk of social exclusion ( as for example Personal House-hold Service, hotels, restaurants and caterings (HORECA)and others), and a better integration of these women that develop these jobs without official professional qualification but with a lot of experience and competences. These skills and competence recognition process have the objectives: - Define of specific training itinerary according to each prospective target group and each occupation. - Develop a protocol for the evaluation and recognition of skills and competences within the most common job roles developed by women at risk of social exclusion (based on EU guidelines for validation and recognition, ECVET and EQAVET) that includes tools for monitoring and quality assurance. -Design curricula and pedagogic material for employment advisers/ officers on how to implement the protocol that includes special attention to soft skills and guidelines to introduce standards to respect for cultural diversity and gender equality. -Produce two courses for employment officers/ trainers on how to implement the protocol in different contexts of competences background and with different target groups. -Disseminate the protocol in each partner country trough guidelines and other methodological tools. -Implement training courses in each territory aimed to develop professional competences and soft skills for women according to specific training itineraries established by each partner. -Disseminate results, protocol and tools created at a transnational level. WhomeN project, implemented through a partnership that includes 9 organizations from 7 countries, will allow reaching the following impacts: * To give a European dimension to the process of recognition of professional competences and personal competences trough soft skills that will allow these women with fewer opportunities to improve their socio-occupational integration process. * Enhancing of intercultural and cross-sector cooperation among organizations involved in the partnership. * Capacity-building among professionals (staff) from organizations in the exchange and transfer of know-how, transversal skills increase, tutoring and counseling, among other issues. * Establishment of networks at EU level of organizations involved in training, education, cooperation, innovation and/or professional competences and soft skills recognition, among other topics. *Design of an effective and usefulness tool aimed to the self-evaluation of personal competences and connecting with EU guidelines EQAVET and ECVET and that includes formal competences recognition process. * Promote employment for women with fewer opportunities through the design of personalized itineraries to recognize professional and personal skills. * Disseminating project outputs at a large scale. WhomeN project will contribute to the Europe 2020 Strategy and targets regarding the role of education and training in recognition of competences, empowering people and ensuring that citizens, in particular, adults who have low levels of education, the unemployed, migrants, and those who have left school early, can access lifelong learning and up-skilling throughout their lives.

The “European learning innovation for sustainable training” (ELIST) project aimed at proving answers to two specific emerging needs in EU rural areas:a) the development and consolidation of entrepreneurial competences (knowledge, skills and attitude) in rural populations, creating new pathways for employment with non-formal and informal learning activities;b) contribute to a positive impact on local development in a sustainable way, considering the environment, the economy and the social context.ELIST addressed a competences shortage and mismatch of quality personnel on the European labour market in the next few years, namely young entrepreneurs in the agricultural sector considering the situation of an ageing population. Improving the quantity and quality of personnel in the agricultural sector has been a key factor to contribute to the rural development taking in consideration challenges in a variety of fields such as food security, health, proper management, migrants integration, sustainable development goals, gender equality, to name but a few. ELIST provided the design of a training course comprising a curriculum, a blended learning training method (residential and e-learning), an open access internet networking platform (available on www.e-list.eu), and guidelines for multipliers and for ECVET framework practitioners. Non formal and informal adult learning in rural and peripheral areas (mainly in agriculture sector and related activities, and in tourism) was the key topic addressed through a practical tool to answer to the emerging jobs demand. Capability building was provided to the young working population, through the accurate preparation, development and enhancement of learning activities, and a mentoring programme for mentors and mentees.The selected target group was represented by: 1) young managers in the sector of agriculture and agri-food, peripheral agriculture, and tourism; 2) young people and women from rural and urban periphery; 3) adult learning practitioners. ELIST provided a key innovative outcome in the field of adult learning thus the learning methodologies were specifically adapted to the anticipated target group according to their level of formal education, work experience and previously evaluated existing competences.Tangible outcomes were obtained according to the following four (4) specific key activities: 1) mapping, scooping and surveying on current competences mismatch and shortage within the rural population; 2) structure a pilot training programme for entrepreneurs and people looking forward to turn entrepreneurs (rural areas, farm and non-farm sectors), based on the principles of sustainable development (environment, economic and social contexts), comprising the definition of key competences (curriculum), and the identification of innovative learning methods to train on sustainable development suitable for adult learners (supported by evaluations on the pilot training programme); 3) provide capacity building of rural population and communities (with the support of a mentoring programme); 4) build a cooperation plan between policy-makers (public authorities), VET providers in general, organisations representative of the referred sector, as well as active civil society organisations (CSO).Summarizing, ELIST aimed at stimulating entrepreneurship activity among rural populations by providing innovative learning tools, as well as creating the conditions for young urban populations to migrate to rural areas, thus will foster employability and mobility of targeted groups, with hands-on and inclusive learning method to improve their competences (knowledge, skills and behaviour), addressing emerging practices on the topic of sustainable development in the rural sector, with tangible outcomes at the EU level such as in-service training courses.