Background of the EQuiPPE project:Physical Education (P.E.) is recognised as the most effective means of providing children with the skills, attitudes, values, knowledge and understanding that are essential to participation in society. It is critical to the development of physical literacy and civic engagement, academic achievement and good physical and mental health (UNESCO, 2015). Despite the UNESCO Charter for Physical Education and Sport, Article 4’s recommendation that personnel professionally responsible for physical education and sport should be appropriately qualified, a high proportion of primary P.E. in Europe is taught by generalist rather than specialist P.E. teachers (Onofre et al., 2012). There was a clear need to support generalist teachers to develop their professional skills and practices in order to improve the quality of P.E. which the EQuiPPE project sought to address. It was recognised that: • Primary-level schools experience a number of challenges in providing high quality P.E. including finance and appropriate training for staff; • Many primary teachers are predominantly generalists rather than specialists and not trained specifically in the delivery of P.E. Aim:The overall aim of the EQuiPPE project was to develop an online set of materials that supported Continuing Professional Development (CPD) for primary P.E. teachers across the EU. In the present context, CPD is a continuous process through which teachers are able to improve skills, knowledge and experience to help them learn, reflect and review their practices. The EQuiPPE project has provided knowledge, information and materials to create a set of resources to increase teachers’ confidence and improve practice in this area. Via input from the partners, teachers, and wider networks of relevant policy makers and professionals, the project developed resources that reflected the needs and preferences of primary teachers responsible for devising and delivering P.E. Objectives:1. To identify examples of good practice from each partner country concerning the use of CPD and teacher education with respect to the provision of primary P.E;2. To liaise with academics, national and European teacher education networks to identify and develop a competency framework for high quality P.E;3. To collaborate with local school networks to ensure appropriateness and acceptability of the package;4. To engage in dissemination and exploitation activities that promote the practical utility of the CPD package;5. To develop the following intellectual outputs:- Intellectual Output 1 (O1): Needs analysis report;- Intellectual Output 2 (O2): EQuiPPE online materials;- Intellectual Output 3 (O3): EQuiPPE online portal;- Intellectual Output 4 (O4): EQuiPPE pilot evaluation report;- Intellectual Output 5 (O5): EQuiPPE multimedia content. Main activities:The project was arranged into six main activities including Project Management and Implementation (PMI), and the five intellectual outputs described above. Methodology:A mixed methodology was deployed to develop the intellectual outputs. This approach combined different types of evidence to provide a more complete response to the need to enhance quality in primary P.E. This involved the use of quantitative and qualitative data to inform the development of the final EQuiPPE resources via the activities undertaken in each of the intellectual outputs.Number and profile of participants:The EQuiPPE project consisted of five partners from Northern (UK), Eastern (Czech Republic, Romania), and Southern (Greece) Europe. These partners included four Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) and an In-Service Teacher Training Centre (Poland). Results and impact: In the short to medium term (0 to 2 years) the following results are anticipated: • enhanced quality of primary P.E. in the partner countries and across the EU; • improved teacher confidence and skills; • increased knowledge and understanding of the importance of physical literacy to a child’s development. Longer term, the impacts of the project activities are expected to accrue benefits for a wide audience including: • better prepared and educated primary P.E. teachers; • improved physical literacy, confidence, physical and mental health, and educational attainment for primary school aged children; • greater access to high quality CPD resources via a freely available online CPD package for primary P.E. teachers; • Improved policy, research and practice through the development of information and evidence concerning the current situation and challenges in primary P.E.

Europe’s urban areas face significant challenges to ensure the availability and consumption of healthy, affordable, safe and sustainably produced food. Such challenges converge within local food environments, but are often neglected by public planners. Promising initiatives taken by municipalities to change the architecture of food choice often fail to become embedded in the wider policy context and to reach deprived and vulnerable groups. Key factors responsible for this are: (1) siloed ways of working and (2) fragmentation of knowledge on facilitators and barriers related to food system transformation. These factors hinder the development and implementation of integrated urban food policies. FOODCLIC will create strong science-policy-practice interfaces across eight European city-regions (45 towns and cities). The backbone of such interfaces will be provided by Food Policy Networks, which will manage real-world experimental Living Labs to build a policy-relevant evidence-base through learning-in-action. Activities will be informed by an innovative conceptual framework (the CLIC), which emphasizes four desired outcomes of food system integration (sustainability co-benefits, spatial linkages, social inclusion and sectoral connectivities). Capacity-building and direct support for intensive multi-stakeholder engagement (including deprived and vulnerable groups) will enable policy actors and urban planners across partner city-regions to develop continuously evolving integrated urban food policies and render planning frameworks food-sensitive. Results will be communicated and disseminated amongst others by extending the novel policy practices to another eight city-regions in Europe and Africa, an online Knowledge-Hub, a high-level Think Tank and partners’ networks. In these ways, FOODCLIC aims to contribute to urban food environments that make healthy and sustainable food available, affordable and attractive to all citizens (including deprived and vulnerable groups).

The EU has developed ambitious policies and regulations to halt biodiversity loss resulting from intensive use of forests and land and climate change. Reversing the decline of biodiversity requires safeguarding existing biodiversity and fostering the adaptive capacity and resilience of the ecosystem. SafeNet relies on a portfolio of complementary tools to develop strategies and solutions to protect and foster biodiversity, while considering the need to manage forests for climate change mitigation, wood and ecosystem service provisioning. SafeNet integrates cutting-edge methods in biodiversity monitoring and mathematical modelling with massive remote sensing and species datasets to better understand the climate change induced shifts in the distributions and migration of genes, species, communities, ecosystems under different climate and forest and land use scenarios. This will allow the prioritization and implementation of anticipatory conservation and management measures, including the protection of corridors among the network of primary and old-growth and other ecologically valuable forests. SafeNet implements a multi-actor approach and engages key stakeholders, including policymakers, forest practitioners, regional and national authorities, certification bodies, and forest-value chain stakeholders, in regional Living Labs developed in case study areas covering four biomes across Europe, and a European level Policy Lab. Stakeholders will co-create solutions with researchers to develop sustainable strategies for real landscapes and innovate EU-level strategies and policies to reconcile conservation goals. Methodologies and scientific advances developed by SafeNet, as well as the transdisciplinary team’s expertise in mathematical biology, remote sensing, forest economy and ecology, environmental conflict management, policy analysis and science-policy interaction, and stakeholder engagement and dissemination-outreach, ensure the success of SafeNet and its impact.

Georgia ratified the UN Convention on the right of persons with disabilities in 2014; However PwDs still experience unequal approach and their rights are frequently violated. Low professional competence of school teachers towards working with pupils with disabilities and special educational needs (SEN ) is one of the main factors influencing quality of inclusive education in Georgian schools. Till now no university in the country has an academic program in special education - at the same time there are about 1500 special teachers working in schools- without proper knowledge and academic diploma/certificate. The training program in inclusive education carried out by the National Centre for Teacher Professional Development is an only way for teachers to enhance professional competence in this regard. With existed curriculum GEO HEIs cannot deal with two main challenges the country has towards inclusive education - (1) Special teachers' proper education - providing them with academic knowledge and diploma/certificate and (2) subject teachers’ low competence towards working with pupils wit SEN - ensuing them with proper education at the university and provide with related continuing education programs. The project is focused on development new academic modules in special education that will be integrated in teacher education program at four GEO HEIS - graduates from the program, future subject/general school teachers will have a proper knowledge to work with pupils with SEN. In addition the certificate program in special education creates opportunities to prepare special teachers with academic knowledge and diploma; short term training programs gives opportunities to school/ field practitioners to refresh professional capacity in inclusive education. And finally strong network of professionals (academicians, school practitioners, NGO/DPO and state agencies) arranged with the frame of the project will create good background for better police and practice.

The main objective of the RoboCom++ proposal is to lay the foundation for a future global interdisciplinary research programme (e.g., a FET-Flagship project) on a new science-based transformative Robotics, to be launched by the end of the H2020 Programme. RoboCom++ will gather the community and organise the knowledge necessary to rethink the design principles and fabrication technologies of future robots. RoboCom++ will aim at developing the cooperative robots (or Companion Robots) of the year 2030, by fostering a deeply multidisciplinary, transnational and federated effort. The mechatronic paradigm adopted today, although successful, may prevent a wider use of robotic systems. For example, system complexity increases with functions, leading to more than linearly increasing costs and power usage and decreasing robustness. RoboCom++ will pursue a radically new design paradigm, grounded in the scientific studies of intelligence in nature. This approach will allow achieving complex functionalities in a new bodyware with limited use of computing resources, mass and energy, with the aim of exploiting compliance instead of fighting it. Simplification mechanisms will be based on the concepts of embodied intelligence, morphological computation, simplexity, and evolutionary and developmental approaches. Exploring these concepts in order to develop new scientific knowledge and new robots that can effectively negotiate natural environments, better interact with human beings, and provide services and support in a variety of real-world, real-life activities, requires a coordinated and federated initiative. Ultimately, the Companion Robots conceived in RoboCom++ may foster a new wave of economic growth in Europe by boosting the deployment of ubiquitous robots and web-based robotic services. The RoboCom++ community will pursue these ambitious objectives by cooperating along three main lines of action: 1) building the community and the tools for research reproducibility (benchmarks, metrics, data sharing protocols, test platforms, standards); 2) proof-of-concept research pilots; and 3) defining the long-term S&T roadmap, competitiveness strategy, governing and financing structure, and the ethical, legal, economic and social framework of a future FET Flagship –like initiative on Robotics . RoboCom++ will actively pursue collaboration with industry, along with dissemination, community outreach and participation of EU citizens and stakeholders, with particular attention to the issue of robots and jobs, and to the analysis and proposition of viable policy options.