Context Roma people form Europe’s largest ethnic minority and have for centuries constituted an integral part of the European society. But despite efforts at national and European level to improve the protection of their fundamental rights and the advance in their social integration, many Roma still face severe poverty, profound social exclusion, barriers to exercising their fundamental rights and discrimination. These problems affect their access to quality education, which, in turn, undermines their employment and income prospects, housing conditions and health status, curbing their overall ability to fully exploit their potential. Improving the educational situation of Roma is a critical test of the EU’s ability to achieve progress in the inclusion of all extremely marginalised and socially excluded groups. Within this context, the participation of Roma in adult learning has continued to fall, from 9,8 % of the 25-64 years old population in 2005 to only 9,1 % in 2020, thus failing to achieve the increased “ET2020” target.Objectives ObjectivesRoma Plus project aims at the development of a new thriving peer learning experience for Adult (low-literate) Roma, increasing attractiveness of training and reducing drop-out rates, while enhancing the skills and competences of adult Trainers/Teachers in the use of new adult training techniques, tailored to the Roma cultural background.The primary objective, is going to be achieved, through two supplementary objectives:1. Development of OER for adult educators working with Adult Roma with low literacy, to enhance their relevant competences.2. Development of peer learning material that will target low literate Roma Adults, creating a learning experience that will increase their literacy skills and number and profile of participants; • Adult Roma population that is going to participate in the peer learning activities to increase their literacy level (60) • Roma Representatives and associations that are going to undertake the role of disseminating the peer learning process to the Roma population, attracting beneficiaries and participants for the implementation of the activities (3) • Adult Trainers/Teachers that are working/delivering training to Adult Roma that show a low-level of functional literature and are in need of upskilling, in order to achieve social inclusion and increase their well-being in local and regional societies (10). • Adult training providers that target vulnerable groups with cultural background and need new ideas and training resources to deliver upskilling of adult Roma populations (6) • Grass-root NGOs that are working with valnurable groups and support Roma Assocations to increase social inclusion of Roma at a local and regional level (6) • Stakeholders at regional/national level who are responsible for the social inclusion of Roma at a National Level, with policies that include upskilling and new learning opportunities for the adult Roma population (6).Activities /ActivitiesIn Roma Plus, based on the Needs Analysis and the identification of the Project Objectives and Results to be achieved, we have prepared a coherent project implementation plan, that includes: • 3 Intellectual Outputs, • 1 Joint Staff Training Event • 4 Transnational Meetings, including the Kick-Off Meeting and the Final Conference • 4 Multiplier Events, including a final ConferenceResultsR1: Increased knowledge of the new adult training methodologies with a specific focus on groups with vultural background (Adult Roma) R2: Individuals are going to be have a better understanding of the available training material and the peer learning activities.R3: Increased acceptance of the Adult Roma Population through their increase in literacy skills.R4: Higher use of the OER produced during IO1 by adult trainers/teachersR5: Higher promotion and awareness raised on the Adult Roma upskilling necesity and process is going to be achieved R6: Active involvement of stakeholders (Roma Associations/representatives) from all relevant areas (local, Regional, National even EU level), and promotion of the cooperation among adult education providers and individual (Adult Roma learners) in the upskilling of their literacy skills is going to be achievedImpact • A higher level of quality in literacy training, through the establishment of OER and our developed peer learning experience. • Increased awareness and visibility of Europass among stakeholders • Roma Representing Associations are going to have the opportunity to expand their awareness on the importance of literacy among the Roma Population and participate in a new thriving learning experience for upskilling their literacy levels.Long Term BenefitsThrough the implementation of the project the Triangle between the Republic of North Macedonia, Greece and Bulgaria is going to strengthen its cultural, social and other connections, increasing prosperity for all and beyond the Adult Roma.

"Youth unemployment across Europe remains on an upwards trajectory, and traditional jobs are being crowded out in favour of new technology-orientated roles. At the same time, young people as innovators, are creating new jobs and markets. Much has been written and done in the area of entrepreneurship. In fact, youth entrepreneurship has now become synonymous to ""innovation"" and many projects have been funded with this objective in mind. Our current youth projects and our standing Youth Advisory Board that has overseen this application pointed out that today's youth not only require skills in hyper-demand areas but also soft skills which are transferable and adaptable to a variety of working environments. In the last five years, empirical evidence suggests the rise of a new category of entrepreneurship: digital entrepreneurship. Digital entrepreneurship can be defined as new ventures or the transformation of an existing business through the creation and usage of novel digital technologies, such as social media marketing, data analytics, mobile usage or cloud solutions. Digital enterprises are characterised by a high degree of utilisation of such digital technologies, due to their ability to improve business operations, heighten business intelligence, increase customer and stakeholder engagement and invent new business models. To respond to this gap, the IARS International Institute has developed a strategic partnership bringing together 4 EU member states (the UK, Greece, Cyprus and the Czech Republic) to run EDEEY as a youth-led transnational project that will develop, test and implement innovative practices in a newly-emerged area in the field of entrepreneurship. With an ever-changing world, rising unemployment and the growing influence of social media and technology, understanding the ways in which digital technology can be harnessed for entrepreneurial pursuits is vital in both preparing young people for the future of work and giving them a toolkit to survive outside the traditional labour market. EDEEY responds to a number of sectoral and horizontal priorities, while it has been developed with the key aim of delivering the new Youth Strategy and Erasmus+ overall objectives.In summary, the intellectual outputs of this project are as follows:IO1: Curriculum development for young people and youth workers/ educationalistsIO2: The project delivery of the eLearning platform for participants including two accredited e-courses for (a) young people (b) youth workers/ educationalists.IO3: Face-to-Face Training for participants in all participating countries.IO4: A Final e-book developed by all partners reporting on findings of research conducted and results of the project. Published in all partner languages (English, Czech, Greek).EDEEY offers an innovative, accredited training course to prepare those without access to infinite capital on how to utilise digital entrepreneurship as a way of poverty alleviation, whilst also increasing the creation of jobs for their peers. Non-formal education is just as crucial as formal education for the development of young people to suit the new future of work, therefore EDEEY is a vital initiative to adequately prepare young people for the labour market. In addition to the youth-led, innovative training programme that the project will create and pilot, it will generate numerous entrepreneurial social action activities through youth volunteering and internships. EDEEY will utilise the concept and practise of digital entrepreneurship as a means of increasing social inclusion for young people who are economically marginalized in society. Responding to the priorities set aside in the Lisbon Agenda and the Europe 2020 strategy treating digital entrepreneurship as a primary component in smart, sustainable and inclusive growth. EDEEY will target young people between the ages of 16-25 with a particular focus on young people from low-income households, females and those from marginalized backgrounds such as Roma. Adopting a youth-led methodology, the project will construct and implement evidence-based, well-tested and replicable educational and training curricula to develop young peoples' practice, creative and entrepreneurial skills to enable them to harness the power of digital entrepreneurship and offer economic empowerment. Many studies have recognised the role in which entrepreneurship aids poverty alleviation, enabling those from disadvantaged backgrounds to break away from their underprivileged positions and seek their own solution to unemployment or discrimination in the labour market. While acquiring these new skills and competencies, our target groups will also receive accreditation as the courses will receive a CPD status. Where applicable we will also offer an ESC Certificate and YouthPass."

The project Virtual Spitfire has 4 partners from 4 countries; UK, Sweden, France and Greece, all working with adult education in socially deprived areas of post-industrial decline. The project aims to support individuals in acquiring and developing basic skills and key competences for low-skilled adults living in post-industrial areas. It will also focus on upskilling adult educators in the use of Virtual Reality in the educational process. This will be carried out by utilising the interest and local knowledge of the people and environments of post- industrial landscapes. We will encourage the often deep interest for the local area by using the context of old industrial factories, mines, harbours, agricultural production centres that once stood at the centre of local communities. The industries may have dissapeared or experienced technological change such as automation leading to loss of employmentSocial inclusion is a process, which assists people to participate fully in life from an economic, social and cultural perspective. The idea is that every member of the society, no matter their background or situation, should be able to participate in the community and society and be encouraged to contribute to social, cultural and work life. The focus of the Virtual Spitfire project is the enhancement of intercultural competences of adults and the improvement of social inclusion capacity through the provision of continuous professional development courses to adult educators for diversity management and intercultural management. Virtual Spitfire project addresses the entrepreneurship, Civic skills, Personal, Social and Learning and Cultural awareness and expression, key competences as specified in Key Competences Recommendation for Lifelong learning (revision 2018). This relies on an awareness of how culture, as a collective social construct, shapes the views of the individual in return. It is important to highlight the crucial process of developing a sense of one’s own place or role in society – which may be understood as one's 'socio-cultural identity' - as well as a sense of the identity of others with positive open-minded attitudes towards diverse cultural differences in different contexts. This understanding of culture, based on the individual existing within particular contexts and communities implies interaction, inclusion and mobility as key issues and opportunities in society. Extending and developing educator's competences.High quality and well trained educators can help adult learners to develop key competences for the labour market and in everyday life. The project is based on a methodological approach designed to maximize impact through the production and sharing of OERs based on practical classroom and work based training activities and on the use of VR and digital media. A Continuous Professional Development course for the training of adult educators on th euse of VR is to be developed by the Virtual Spitfire project. The project focuses on on-line training material where adult educators etc. can access to high quality material for the target group. The project allows adult educators through the use research skills for VR in a simple, effective and relatively inexpensive way to contribute to an individials development. Allowing them to train on simple tasks and key competences that would otherwise be prohibitively time-consuming. Additionally adult educators will receive training on the use of post-industrial landscapes with their asscoiated archives as a resource in their work.The Outputs include:1.Methodological Framework. Using Local Industrial Heritage and Virtual Reality for Adult Education2.Main Virtual Reality Production Example of Spitfire manufacturing3.CPD Training course curriculum4.Scenario-based eLearning and Learning Outcome Matrix5.VIRTUAL SPITFIRE OER PlatformThe impact and long term benefitsAt local level, the availability of “ready-to-use” resources on VR in Adult education and methods will immediately reinforce the response of the sector to the urgent needs of EU societies in terms of social and professional inclusion of different cultural groups and in general people with disadvantaged backgrounds. At regional/national level, the Virtual Spitfire project is expected to create a common methodological framework, based on a smart use of VR technologies for enhancing key competences. At European level the project aims to contribute to the debate of facilitating VR blended training to adult groups into order to enter the labour market. The creation of a local body of adult educators trained and competent in using materials and implementing strategies to successfully transfer key competences to adult learners entering the labour market.

<< Background >>The UNROOT project starts from the fact that gender-based violence (GBV) affects women at all levels of society and across Europe, regardless of age, education, income, social position or country of origin/residence. Moreover, the situation is indeed far worse in cases where women have no access to support structures, such as in rural areas. Indicatively, the 2020 report from GREVIO shows the absence of effective measures addressing the needs of women from vulnerable groups, such as women from rural areas who frequently face specific barriers. In the case of the primary prevention of GBV is highly important to develop andimplement projects that reach out to those communities and support both women and men with fewer access opportunities to reduce harmful traditional practices, behaviors, and customs contributing to GBV; create an open dialogue with community members about GBV issues and gender stereotypes; and design bystander intervention strategies to go deeper to the stereotypes and prejudices that pertain GBV and empower people to find their own voice beyond social norms. The carefully designed project results aim to first and foremost create inclusive learning and training environments where all target groups will feel safe to voice their concerns regarding GBV and take initiative for the prevention of GBV at the individual, community, societal, and systemic level.<< Objectives >>UNROOT has been designed to intervene at the individual, collective and societal level in rural communities in order to: -Sensitize and advocate for raising awareness on various aspects of GBV and their negative consequences for women,men, families, and the community at large; -Strengthen participants’ knowledge through training and support; -Helpparticipants to reduce harmful traditional practices, behaviors, and customs contributing to GBV; -Create an opendialogue with community members about GBV issues and gender stereotypes; -Design bystander intervention strategiesto go deeper to the stereotypes and prejudices that pertain GBV and empower people to find their own voice beyondsocial norms; -Bring together stakeholders at local, regional, and national level through advocacy practices andexploration of policy solutions.<< Implementation >>The project includes a Transnational Training Activity (C1) to enhance the competences of adult support workers and trainers that work closely with the topic of GBV and support women in rural and non-urban localities, a diverse range of multiplier activities (including local events and a transnational final conference) as well as smaller scale activities such as research, focus groups, interviews, policy webinars and a large-scale awareness-raising training programme, informing the project results and implementation. In addition to the above, the project will also implement a range of management activities, such as online and face-to-face dissemination activities, quality assurance and impact assessment of project results and training schemes, branding strategy, and a sustainability plan.<< Results >>The outcomes of the project will be increased understanding of the various aspects of GBV and their negative consequencesfor women, men, families, and the community at large, strengthened women and men’s knowledge on GBV through training and support, enhanced collaboration between rural communities across Europe in order to effectively strategize for the prevention of GBV, support of adult support workers and trainers who primarily work with adults in small communities through the developed methodology, networking and material that will also contribute to the project’s sustainability. UNROOT sets a clear methodological and strategical path for developing resources for the primary prevention of GBV. The project will produce the following results: a) The UNROOT preparatory phase that consists of the identification of rural communities/localities that will closely collaborate with participating organisations during the project implementation; the setting up of sharing and support system in the selected rural communities; and the development of guidelines for collecting information from above target groupsregarding current practices, gaps and challenges. b) A training manual will be developed that includes definitions of GBV; key aspects and analyses of social norms and GBV; methodological approaches for educating on GBV; the role of media; criteria for developing training paths in non-formal settings; approaches and methodologies for active bystander intervention for adults who live in rural communities. The training manual will give access to and facilitate the delivery of the UNROOT awareness-raising training programme (PR2), a 60-hour long, highly focused and specialized awareness-raising training on the primary prevention of GBV to women and men with different social backgrounds living in non-urban, rural areas. c) An advocacy campaign (PR3), involving the monitoring of key policy processes at national level and informing policy and decision makers and other stakeholders about pilot activities and possible changes at systemic level through active participation in policy meetings and processes.

An increasing number of LGBTQI people are forced to flee their home country seeking greater sexual equality or even escaping persecution, since LGBTQI identity is criminalised in more than 70 countries worldwide. Obtaining reliable statistics on the numbers of LGBTQI asylum seekers is very difficult, since the majority of EU Member States do not collect specific data. However, their number is significant, taking into account the existing migrant populations in the EU and the UK. Based on Eurostat (2019), 22.3 million non-EU citizens were living in the EU on 1 January 2018, while the number of people living in the EU-28 born outside of the EU was 38.2 million. Based on the same source, third-country-national populations in the UK, Italy, Greece and Cyprus were estimated for 2018 at 2.5 mil (3.7% of the population), 3.5 mil (6% of the population), 600.000 (5.6% of the population) and 34.600 (4% of the population) respectively. Although volunteer or forced migration of LGBTQI people is not a new phenomenon, the link between sexual identity and the decision to migrate is a highly understudied aspect of migration. Due to the difficulty in obtaining samples from such a marginalised and largely hidden social group, there is limited research regarding the life circumstances of LGBTQI migrants/refugees. Addressing this dearth of specific guidelines on how to treat LGBTQI migrants/refugees, this project intends to tackle discrimination and promote social cohesion by forming an educational programme shaped to suit the needs of this ‘doubly disadvantaged’ social group.The key aim of this project is to strengthen the capacity of professionals (of the social and employment sector) in answering the needs of LGBTQI refugees, migrants and asylum seekers. This will be achieved through the objective of developing a sustainable training programme that will enlighten professionals on the challenges posed by the double stigma attached to this community. The programme will give a profound insight into basic concepts related to LGBTQI people’s rights and needs, as well as the culture of the LGBTQI migrants’/refugees’ countries of origin with a view to providing personalised support and a specific methodology regarding their integration into the culture and reality of the host country.The project targets professionals working in services related to migrants, refugees and asylum seekers. It consists of need-oriented educational interventions on the way professionals are guided to provide services to the LGBTQI migrant/refugee community, who are also a target group as they are going to be benefited. It will be implemented in 4 different countries that share the same needs and challenges (the UK, Italy, Greece and Cyprus) by a 5-partner consortium.During the project:-60 Educators and Professionals supporting migrants will have their capacities built on how to efficiently promote the integration of LGBTQI migrants into formal and informal Adult Education settings;-80 additional educators and professionals of the employment and social sector supporting migrants will be introduced to the capacity building programme and its details.-60 migrants will have the opportunity to learn about the newly developed capacity building programme for educators and professionals of the employment and social sector supporting migrants and its envisaged benefits;--3 open days and an international conference will be organised in the 4 implementing countries for promoting the project and its results to ~220 persons.The envisaged impact and long term benefits of the project include:-Provide professionals of the social and employment sector with actual information regarding the complex issues encountered by the LGBTQI community, special when it comes to people with migrant backgrounds. -Educate personnel on the detrimental effect xenophobic or homo-transphobic discrimination has not only on the LGBTQI migrants but also on our community as a whole.-Equip professionals with appropriate educational tools and material in order to be able to identify/prevent discrimination incidents and provide support to victimised individuals. -Minimise incidents of physical and emotional harassment towards LGBTQI migrants in asylum and detention centres, resettlement centres, refugee shelters and camps, as well as local community.-Decrease LGBTQI migrants’/refugees’ insecurity to disclose their LGBTQI identity out of fear of discrimination.-Ensure a fulfilling future for older adult LGBTQI migrants, the majority of whom have lived through a lifetime of social and legal rejection as well as continuous victimisation displaying noteworthy resilience. -Eradicate minority stress faced by the long-stigmatised LGBTQI migrant/refugee group, which has concrete negative impacts on their well-being, often leading to self-hatred, poor mental and physical health, higher rates of substances abuse or suicide attempts.