There is a significant lack of women in STEM. Globally, women are under-represented in STEM fields due to deep-rooted gender differences and career expectations, rather than a reflection of ability (OECD, 2017). In the UK, women make up just 14.4% of the STEM workforce (Wise Campaign, 2015). Women Europe-wide are less motivated to study STEM subjects from a young age, due to perceived inequality in the fields (Microsoft, n.d.). Interlinking socio-cultural and economic factors impinge on the quality of girls’ education which impacts their decisions regarding future study and careers in STEM (UNESCO, 2017). This results in low levels of female interest and participation in STEM, and high drop-out rates for those that do choose to pursue STEM education (UNESCO, 2015).The large numbers of women who ‘leak’ out of the STEM pipeline as their career progresses has been labelled the ‘Leaky Pipeline’. This leaky pipeline has been the result of the challenges that women face in the Recruitment, Retention and Progression of their careers (RRP framework- WISE Campaign and EQUALITEC project 2001). This has significant economic and social implications for women having to start a new career (Women’s Engineering Society, 2014) and negatively impacts the EU economy, affecting levels of unemployment and GDP (gross domestic product) (European Institute for Gender Equality, n.d.).There is a strong case for diversity in STEM, as it enables organisations to maximise individual opportunity (CaSE, 2014) and benefit from diverse workforces that increase levels of productivity and creativity (WISE, 2014). Furthermore, employing organisations wishing to attract top talent must diversify and adapt to candidates’ needs, as competition for top candidates increases (Forbes, 2011). This project will address gender disparities in STEM, with a focus on those facing a double disadvantage. The lack of diversity in STEM affects all minority groups. Disabled STEM students are 57% less likely to pursue further study than non-disabled students (CaSE, 2014). There are strong links between low socio-economic status and low participation in STEM (Royal Society, 2008). Just 0.5% of board members in engineering in the UK are black (Women in STEM, 2019).Women in STEM need support at all stages of their career (Amazon HR strategy 2019) but mainly they need support in building their confidence and soft skills to navigate in a male dominated environment. (https://www.personneltoday.com/hr/amazon-unveils-strategy-to-increase-women-in-stem-roles/) The FemSTEM Coaching project aims to bridge the soft skills gender gap in STEM, by providing women with tools and techniques to develop their confidence and soft skills through a combination of online training and peer-support Coaching Circles™, that are framed around the RRP framework.The project objectives are to:-Use the RRP framework to create a comprehensive approach to deliver interventions to address the challenges faced by women during the RRP stages-Develop an E-Coaching programme for women in STEM-Develop a face-to-face peer coaching programme for women in STEM-Increase women’s self-confidence, self-efficacy and develop their soft skills and employability skillsTo achieve this, there will be three intellectual outputs carried out as part of the project:-IO1 – RRP Framework testingCrucial to this programme will be the incorporation of the RRP framework, to ensure that it addresses the needs of women at all stages of their careers in STEM and adapts the coaching models which will be provided.-IO2 – FemSTEM E-Coaching ProgrammeFemSTEM Coaching aims to tackle the issues facing women in STEM through the creation of a comprehensive E-Coaching Programme, consisting of five modules that will address the most important soft skills for women in STEM -IO3 – Coaching Circles™The Coaching Circles™ will allow for a more in-depth exploration of the soft-skills development via peer-support to improve self-efficacy. The target group is all women in STEM, however the project will particularly focus on providing support for those facing a double disadvantage, including BAME individuals, those from lower socio-economic backgrounds, older workers, people with disabilities, etc.The platform will enable women to fit what they have learnt into the context of STEM industries, by providing them with positive role models and encouraging them to take the next steps towards their future career in STEM.This project will serve as a tool for women in STEM to use for career development long after the end of the project. The project’s website and platform will exist as a long-standing resource for soft-skill development at all stages throughout women’s careers. The Career Circles™ facilitator’s guide will enable coaches and trainers to facilitate the Circles™ in the future, as this will provide a comprehensive explanation of the methodology and how to deliver them.

Coding is a new literacy and it is now considered a basic skill such as writing, reading, and counting. It can also be compared to learning a new language: the language allowing to speak to computers and understand better how their applications work.Women use computers as much as men, have a strong interest in new technologies tools & applications and want to develop further in that field which offer many great opportunities. However the geek stereotype is still going strong. Lack of confidence across the board is also a strong barrier for women empowerment. Many new innovatives initiatives arose in the recent year trying to attract women to learn coding skills, at any age or time in their life, especially thanks to more informal, supportive, and social activities. WOW - Code 2 confidence explore the need for organisations dealing with women empowerment and digital education to connect at an European level, to exchange best practices and ideas, develop common projects so their activities & actions is better recognized and understood by stakeholders.The project aims to demonstrate how awareness-raising activities can enable women learners to be empowered with new skills to better use their social and economic rights. How can such activities can inspired women learner to develop themselves further to take active part to the new digital transformation and access the new jobs created by the digital transformation ? What are the skills & competences which can build from basic coding education ? What are the learning outcomes ? How can these learning outcomes can be improved ? How can be the skills valued when looking for a job or in the workplace ? How these skills can be used by women to be empowered towards social & economical rights ?The project is based of exchange of best practices around four topis: learner experience, creativity, employability & entrepreneurship. It involved at core 6 organisations dealing with women learners in digital education. The project aims to reach at least 300 women learners . It also aim to create an impact to support awareness raising and advocacy for digital & coding education for inclusion of women.

Gender4STEM “Gender aware education and teaching”, is a co-funded Erasmus+ project, led by the Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology (LIST). This project was launched in 2017 and gathered 6 partners, experts in gender, technological and learning issues, beside LIST: Consulio from Croatia, VHTO from the Netherlands, SMART VENICE from Italy, FUNDATIA POFESSIONAL from Romania and Women in Digital and LIST from Luxembourg. To spark greater interest in STEM disciplines among girls, the project Gender4STEM aims to support teachers in stepping up their gender fair teaching practices. “Girls are not talented at science, science is for geeks and thus not for girls…” These are some persistent gender stereotypes in science education. We want to tackle this issue and therefore, we have developed a platform for teachers, to provide them with concrete tools for more gender-fair teaching practices. Our platform is called Gender4STEM Teaching Assistant (https://edu.gender4stem-project.eu/). STEM stands for Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics. These are key drivers for innovation. The problem is that girls are still underrepresented in these disciplines. One of the reasons why STEM disciplines are unappealing to girls might be persistent gender stereotypes. Culture, education, training, labour market practises can be vectors of these stereotypes. Teachers are not always equipped to manage gender diversity in their classrooms. For example, there is little teacher training dealing with these issues. Likewise, teaching materials often lack female role models to stimulate interest of young girls in STEM. Built on the survey of the common gender stereotypes in STEM education in EU (IO1) and the state of the art, as well as the creation of relevant teaching materials to counteract these stereotypes (IO2), the Gender4STEM platform (IO4) provides about 100 teaching materials to support them in stepping up gender-fair teaching practices: a) quiz and tips to raise awareness on gender stereotypes and increase knowledge of women in STEM, b) guidelines to organize gender balance coding sessions or STEM female role model meetings, andc) videos introducing inspiring women in STEM testimonials etc.The Gender4STEM platform is primarily for teachers, but is also relevant for school psychologists and counsellors, as well as career guidance advisors of Secondary Level Education. How can it be used? This is straight forward: Teachers create an account and connect to the Gender4STEM Teaching Assistant platform. Then we recommend using the self-assessment tool (IO3) to find out how gender fair their teaching practices are and propose personalized recommendations of teaching materials (IO3) and experiment them in classrooms.They can also attend the Gender4STEM hands-on blended training (IO5). If they want to know if they have gender-conscious or unconscious biases when teaching, they can participate in two training sessions. They discover the Gender4STEM Teaching Assistant and available teaching materials, with which they can experiment in classrooms, and they can share their difficulties and successes regarding the issue of gender fair in teaching. Thanks to the Gender4STEM platform and training, teachers are fully equipped to get mote girls excited about STEM. At the end of the project, the Gender4STEM community involved about 50 EU teachers, 100 EU students and 60 EU experts. 6 gender fair teaching projects were conducted in European Schools 2019 and 280 people from target groups participated in the multiplier events. More than 2200 people visited the Gender4STEM website (https://www.gender4stem-project.eu/) and about 160 follow the project Facebook page (Gender4stem.erasmus.project). We count 420 users of the Gender4STEM Teaching Assistant platform, among them about 70 have used the self-assessment tool and received recommendations of teaching materials to step up their gender fair teaching. We’re also starting to plan for relevant applications of the self-assessment tool and the recommendations’ system in other areas, for examples: How to promote gender sensitivity among companies, in HR management practices (recruitment or careers’ mobility)? How to promote gender sensitivity in Science and Technology research and academic sector. Of course, the final objective is always to attract more girls and women in STEM!

All files relevant to this project including, CVs and contracts of staff member, timesheets, travel reports for all people involved, Intellectual Outputs, Quality and Dissemination reports are provided as part of the present report in the following link: http://repository.erasmusplus.website/eskills4all/ (Username: evaluator Password: Evaluator101!)Context/BackgroundThe eSkills4ALL project seeks to understand the digital world while it aims to update the digital skills of low digital skilled adults. These adults may face challenges as they deal with increasingly complex and diverse learning situations in a constantly changing work environment with the involvement of new technologies and a the ever changing labour market with highly technical demands for skills. Basic digital skills are essential for bridging the gap between the education and the work and achieving a better job as well as a higher salary.ObjectivesWith the right skills, people are better equipped to find good-quality jobs and can fulfill their potential as confident, active citizen. If those who are long-term unemployed are to have any chance of finding quality employment, they must be given the tools to successfully adjust to this new reality, as even ‘old’ jobs now require ‘new’ skills. Therefore, our objectives were to design, develop, test, implement and disseminate an innovative online training application that will help those with low digital skills (predominantly women but not exclusive) to gain a new set of skills adequate to better their career or simply get a career. Undertaken ActivitiesEurope faces a basic skills challenge. People need a minimum level of basic skills, including numeracy, literacy and basic digital skills, to access good jobs and participate fully in society. These are also the building blocks for further learning and career development. Thus, the consortium decided to investigate the current scene of each partner country to identify the current needs (IO1). 2 surveys were conducted, one with 5 employers from each country to conclude the skills they need their staff to have, and then from this we created a second survey.From this research, we concluded 28 essential digital competencies that were the selected and divided into five categories: Information and Data Literacy, Digital Content Creation, Communication and Collaboration, Safety and Problem Solving (See Tree Structure). These 5 modules were divided between the partners who identified the Module Title, Main Objective, 3 Topics, Learning Outcomes and Employability/Soft skills and who then wrote the content and created the questions.We also developed 6 Open Badges. 1 per Module and a final eSkills4All Expert badge if you get all 5 badges. To gain a badge, you must get 70% or above in the multiplier questions test. Through this process, Open Badges can be turned into new collaborations, jobs, internships, and richer connections between lifelong learners.Our platform (https://academy.eskills4all.eu/) was then built and is available in 4 European languages; English, French, Greek and Romanian. It has been tested by all partners, pilot tested by our direct target group in all partner languages and used by many to gain badges already. The feedback has been extremely positive, and it has resulted in Emphasys in Cyprus and WIDE in Luxembourg, setting up drop in centres for those who have questions about preparing a CV, practice their soft skills etc.We also created an Up-skilling Handbook for the target group and the organisers and includes a:- Description of the project - Description of the eSKILLS Training Programme - Curriculum of be covered - Outline and schedule of on-line and in-house training/HUBS in Cyprus and Lux. - Practical Arrangements: Dissemination, Venue, schedule of training, registration procedures etc. - Registration and participation procedures: on-line registration, selection of courses, time schedule, participation requirements etc.- Assessment and validation procedures: self and external evaluation, screening test prior, during and after participation in the programme, certification etc. - Initial instructions for the programme-Templates to run the training courseThe toolkit is also translated into the 4 European languages; English, French, Greek and Romanian.We then ran Pilots lead by CIVIC in partner countries to validate the Training course which was followed by a report of findings. We managed to do pilots with just over 100 people and each of them went very well. You can see a testimonial on our websites Homepage.Target GroupThe direct target group is adults with a focus on women (low-skilled, long-term unemployed) who will first record their current digital skills (through self-assessment), second acquire or upgrade their digital skills related to employability in order to bridge the skills gap and meet the digital needs of the labour market and third validate their new digital skills through the open badges. The indirect target group is Adult Educators, leaders and providers of Adult Education, as all products to be developed will be provided open for use for the benefit of adults.

"""Made in Women: fostering the capacity building of youth workers in unlocking the entrepreneurial skills of young women through the modelling of an innovative collaborative E-commerce"" is a project designed based on the strengths, capabilities and expertise of seven consortium members, in a way that will create an innovative and entrepreneurial programme for “young female entrepreneurs”, focusing on the ITC entrepreneurial potential of vulnerable young women entrepreneurs within culturally-sensitive economic sectors such as handicrafs. The project will be implemented in 6 countries (Martinique- France, Italy,Dominica, Peru and Madagascar) with the resourceful collaboration of 7 involved organisations ( youth organizations, social enterprises and research institute)Made In Women main aim is to support 20 youth vulnerable women by unlocking their entrepreneurial and digital skills and strengthen the skills and capacities of 21 youth workers in a peer-to-peer learning exploring new way of doing business by modelling a piloting innovative e-commerce based on collaborative business and social entrepreneurship. MadeInWomen is networking, social entrepreneurship, learning to learn, and sense of initiatives, job opportunities and international cooperation. MadeInWomen is an 18 months project whose main activities are:- Market Research on e-commerce in EU. Characteristics and job opportunities for youth women- Research on Import/Export legislation through e-commerce (in and between Europe, Madagascar, Peru, Dominica- The MadeInWomen platform (incubation of entrepreneurial and collaborative projects for youth women)- Training Mobility in Dominique: Learning how to start an online business from scratch (core components, how to build an e-commerce and collaborative forms of e-commerce; introduction to social enterprise- Training Mobility in Madagascar: How to set up your e-commerce business (logistic, sales and the e-commerce platform: what we need to be able to do in the digital worldon how to promote your e-commerce-Training Mobility in Peru: how to promote your e-commerce and social commerce -3 Local Transnational Multiplier Events in Dominica, Madagascar and Peru: The MadeInWomen Human libraries café- Giving Back local workshop!- Training Mobility in Italy: funding opportunities, how to apply and how to make a pitch of our product through storytelling - Made in Women Final event The project is totally in line with the specific objectives pursued by this Program: 1. Foster cooperation and exchanges in the field of youth between Program and Partner Countries; 2. Improve quality and recognition of youth work, NFE in Partner Countries and enhance synergies among education systems, labor market and society; 3. promote transnational NFE mobility between Program and Partner Countries, especially targeting disadvantaged youth."