In today's labor markets, which are living exponential transformations that have a cross-cutting impact on practically all sectors and occupations, continuous training, c-VET, becomes a key tool. Training gaps have a quantifiable negative impact on the employment opportunities of workers, and especially in people with a lower educational level, who are exposed to almost twice as likely to be unemployed with the economic and social loss that this implies.Law 30/2015, which regulates the vocational training system for employment in Spain, already included among its aims to promote lifelong training for unemployed and employed workers to improve their professional skills and their employment itineraries and training. Thus, numerous agents, ranging from public institutions to providers of continuing and occupational training, work to offer adequate responses to current training demands.Some data show a clearly improvable panorama. For example, in Spain, the tendency to participate in c-VET has decreased (by 15% between 2017 and 2018, according to FUNDAE data), and stands at 7.4% for non-formal training (INE data). In addition, those with lower qualifications participate to a lesser extent, which also affects their levels of employability. Some other EU countries show even lower rates, like Bulgaria (2.5%), Greece (4.5%) or Cyprus (6.7%), according to Eurostat data, 2018.Experts call for updating the scenario of c-VET and in-company training because low participation is identified with training topics out-of-date from the reality of the new working scenarios, and with the use traditional and unmotivating methodologies for the profile of low-skilled people.One of the elements that most affect the success of a training initiative aimed at workers and unemployed people with lower qualifications is the pedagogical approach and the applied methodology. Andragogical approaches and methodologies for experiential and creative learning are placed at the centre of the stage to enable the design and delivery of innovative, motivating, and c-VET that allows the development of the so-called transversal skills of the 21st century (problem solving , communication, critical thinking, etc.)The ELMET project tries to contribute to the development of innovative and updated c-VET opportunities by developing a set of resources, in the form of a complete TOOLKIT that enable c-VET trainers and experts to design and use the educative Escape Games (including digital escape rooms) as new active learning methodology to develop the key abilities and competences requested from the Changing Working environments.The project main target group are trainers of employed and unemployed people (specially low qualified, long term unemployed, migrants, etc.) and of active professionals that want to recycle their skills and competences to new working environments.ELMET project objectives are:- To innovate in the field of c-VET by supporting trainers in the design, delivery and evaluation of active learning methodologies.- To facilitate the application of Escape Rooms, including fully digital ones, for the development of skills and competences necessary for the jobs and occupations in the digital era.- To support c-VET trainers in the acquisition of competences, skills, knowledge and resources for the use of active learning methodologies.- To raise awareness on the need of modernising the delivery of c-VET schemes to adapt them to new labour and learning scenarios.- To improve the quality of the training offered to vulnerable workers and unemployed people so they are motivated and engaged to the learning process.ELMET TOOLKIT for the design, delivery and evaluation of experiential learning programmes will offer a complete set of ready-to-use resources, including: - A training course on the design of escape rooms: specific for the continuous training field.- A guide to support each of the stages that comprise this learning methodology: design, implementation, facilitation and evaluation.- A guide to support the creation of 100% digital-based escape-rooms.- 3 ready to use escape rooms in offline version and 3 ready-to-use escape rooms in online version, focusing on the 3 main transversal topics identified among the needs of active workers or unemployed people (i.e. new digital working environments, green transversal skills, 21th century soft-skills (creative and critical thinking, effective communication, teamwork and collaboration in intercultural environments).ELMET seeks to make a significant impact on current training practices, equipping c-VET professionals with practical resources based on innovative methodologies. We believe that the use of the project's tools will help to generate motivating (face-to-face and virtual) learning spaces for the most vulnerable student profiles, and that, in addition, the project's results are easily transferable to other educational levels.

"<< Background >>CoMuSYc will develop a comprehensive and cross-sectoral strategy that will increase the intercultural and transnational dialogue between young people, using creativity and art as fundamental tools for mediating and building bridges. A high number of reports and studies reveal how social marginalization continues to represent a widely diffused phenomenon in contemporary Europe, in particular in the Mediterranean region. Young individuals who are struggling to find a pathway in their transition from study to work tend to loosen the ties with their communities, becoming uninterested in the economic, social and political reality of the country and continent where they live and losing any trust in the possibility of becoming active members of their society.CoMuSYc aims to play an active role in fighting again the risk for social exclusion, providing tools and strategies for keeping open the lines of dialogue with marginalized youth, helping them in expressing their fears, and valorizing their key competencies and skills in an open Europe. The use of creativity will allow these young people to become active members of a democratic Europe, supporting them in rethinking their possibilities to find new opportunities in the labour market.<< Objectives >>The core innovation of CoMuSYc resides in its idea of creating a series of learning access points in everyday experience, where individuals will be put in the condition of expressing their ideas with imaginative, structured nf/if cultural and artistic learning. CoMuSYc seeks to develop Project Results that support the creation of new pathways to initial vocational education and social integration. By fully utilizing peer mentors aged 18-30 as motivators (active involvement of target group in project tools design and development), the CoMuSYc approach combines these elements to bring ‘back’ into learning and engaging marginalized youth and support their social and economic integration. The CoMuSYc approach will place the key competencies, especially soft skills, of the European Reference Framework for Lifelong Learning (ERF) at its heart, and equip the trainers and tutors that support the young people with adaptable and effective tools.<< Implementation >>The specific objectives of the project are:- designing and test new, non-formal and informal culture-based training and peer learning activities for 100 young people aged 18-30, delivered via tutor and peer support in several non-formal and informal pathways;- creating an innovative series of 'unconventional' spaces to engage alienated and marginalized young people, that will support tutors in youth organizations and peer-mentors who use cultural learning in non-formal/informal contexts;- developing transversal and transferable skills (especially soft skills) for marginalized young people, structured around and informed by the key competencies of the European Reference Framework for Lifelong Learning.The project will pursue these objectives by creating a set of methodologies for integrating music therapy into a series of tools that could be used by coaches and peer mentors to support the Re-activation (Project result 1) process. Moreover, the project contents will be supported by the development of an open educational resource (OER) for the creation of digital creative content and high-quality multimedia products. This OER will be an easy-to-use and completely free tool that will support NEETs to create their own videos and multimedia content. The software will come with a video tutorial that explains the main functionalities, providing examples on how to use it in everyday life. These contents will be delivered within the framework of a methodology based on ""Scenarios of activation"", a multiplicity of access points in which the project users will be asked to adopt creative and participative approaches to everyday reality.<< Results >>Comusyc partnership aims to develop an “integrated” approach, joining the efforts of 7 organizations from 5 countries that have different profiles and backgrounds and a common proven track record of supporting young people (and NEETs) into active citizenship and participation. A similar multiplicity of focuses and ranges of action will guarantee an advantageous sharing of experiences and expertise, creating a consortium able to develop transnational methodologies for the valorization of informal learning approaches to address social exclusion.COMUSYC will involve and realize:- No. 5 National CoMuSYc Teams (NCT)- No. 20 NCT participants per partner (no.100 in total)- No. 10 Best Practices detected per partner (no. 50 in total) on the creative use of music and visual arts to increase youth (18-30) participation from all Europe and the development of their soft skills;- No. 5 Workshops NCT (no.1 per partner)- No. 5 Workshop Reports (no.1 per partner)- Questionnaire for feedback collection (Quality)- No.1 Transnational Document (based on Workshop Reports and C1 Report). It will be published on the website- Templates and Videos with pedagogical purposes (related with project result 1.3)- An adaptable Toolkit- E-Manual for the coaches/trainers and peer mentors- No. 100 participants at the pilot (it is not necessary that they are those who part in the NCT)- At least, 10 video diaries per piloting partner (no.50 in total) recording participants- A Digital Library, that will support the sustainability of the project- The organizators of the Lucca Comics Festival have expressed their interest in becoming an associate partner of the COMUSYC proposal, providing a wide resonance to the project activities. A letter of association will be delivered as soon as possible after the activation of project activities, clearly determining the set of joint activities that will be organized yearly to guarantee broad dissemination to the COMUSYC action."

The project aims to promote quality, innovation and recognition of youth work through the platform and outputs, as this is an overarching theme and strategic objective of the 2019-2027 Youth Goals. Increasing and maintaining the quality of Youth work across Europe is key to achieving the Youth Goals, and this can be done by ensuring youth organisations and youth workers are able to learn from each other by recognising and sharing good practices of other European youth projects, increasing the quality of youth work, the skills, competences and understanding of youth workers and in turn, facilitating high quality opportunities and support for the youths engaged with them.To address these priorities, the project will strengthen and support the mandate of the EU Youth Coordinator (to ensure that youth issues are mainstreamed and well connected with all policy areas of the EU that affect young people) through the use of an innovative tool (within the YI+ digital platform), which will increase transnational collaboration between youth organisations, promote “sister project” collaboration, engagement and sharing of lessons learned. The project will support and facilitate the dissemination of project results, outcomes and the impacts of European funded youth projects by connecting the youth work sector, to achieve the objective of mainstreaming youth lead initiatives.We have selected the above priorities, to ensure the project is aligned with several of the 2019-2027 Youth Goals, which also shaped the project's objectives.1. Enhance recognition of Youth Work through European funded programmes across Europe at national and EU level2. Improve sectoral cooperation, including through the EU Youth Coordinator's mandate, to give youth a voice in shaping EU policies3. Support the capacity building of youth workers and youth work practices4. Reinforce links between policy, research and practice and promote better knowledge about the situation of young people and youth policiesProject Outputs:IO1: YouthImpact+ Digital Tool and PlatformIO2: YouthImpact+ Training e-CourseIO3: YouthImpact+ Community of PracticeIO4: YouthImpact+ Tool Assessment and Policy Recommendations

In 2017, still 61 million adults aged 25 to 64 had stopped their formal education before completing upper secondary education. Through the Upskilling Pathways Recommendation, Member States agreed to adopt a strategic approach to provide joined-up learning opportunities to the EU’s 61 million low-skilled adults, built on easily accessible pathways and comprising three steps, starting with skills assessment to identify existing skills and upskilling needs.A skills audit is a process aimed at identifying and analysing the knowledge, skills and competences of an individual, including his or her aptitudes and motivations in order to define a career project and /or plan a professional reorientation or training project; the aim of a skills audit is to help the individual analyse his/her career background, to self-assess his/her position in the labour environment and to plan a career pathway, or in some cases to prepare for the validation of non-formal or informal learning outcomes. Nevertheless, as previous researches and projects evidence, the relationship between validation and skills audits is not always clear to stakeholders and the level of integration between validation and skills audits varies, depending on the type of audit. The conclusions of the study on ‘Mapping Skills Audits in and across the EU’ (2017;E.C) outlined that, in order to be effective, the skills audit process needs to be tailored to target groups. The analysis also identifies several trends that could be gaining importance in the future, including the use of digital tools. Technology is increasingly being used as an intermediary solution. For example, the use of technology to develop open badges or online portfolios which are easily storable (i.e. online), can have a process of external validation as well. The aim of ASSESS PLUS is to support Skills Audits in adult education through innovative digital tools and products to make available skills identification and screening, including the validation of skills acquired through informal and non-formal learning, and facilitate the progress of low-skilled and disadvantaged adults towards higher qualifications.To do so, seven European adult education providers, experts in skills assessment and validation and in digital solutions applied to training and employment from six countries, France, Spain, Austria, Ireland, Bulgaria and Greece, will work together to co-create a set of innovative tools and digital solutions, including: - a European Framework of Competences in Skills Audits for Adult Education (IO1) - an ASSESS PLUS Virtual CAMPUS (IO2), that Includes the following Open Educational Resources: (i) an Online Instructional Guide on Digital Competencies for Virtual Learning; (ii) a set of structured Training Modules (iii) VET Open Online Courses (VOOC) - a Mobile Assessment App for Skills Audits (IO3)- a Guidelines to promote transparency and recognition of skills and qualifications through Skills Audits in Adult Education (IO4)Target users and beneficiaries are: (i) Counsellors, guidance personnel, assessors and practitioners involved with validation (ii) Disadvantaged adults. ASSESS PLUS will involve directly 70 target users (40 partner´s staff /25 experts involved / 5 target users in pilots), 125 disadvantaged adults (in pilots) and 36 stakeholders. At local, regional, national and European level the project will reach a minimum audience of 1000 recipients through the project dissemination activities.The project will use European frameworks of reference, such as EQF and ECVET, to promote new learning pathways and boost transparency, recognition and mobility in Europe. Key sectorial and Adult Education associated partners and stakeholders related with the fields of guidance, training and validation of non-formal and informal learning, involved in the project, will support the dissemination of products and mainstreaming of final results. The project will have a direct positive impact in: (i) partners and organizations involved in the project activities will improve their Skills Audit methods and tools (ii) the low qualified and disadvantaged adults will have access to better up skilling pathways to improve their skills, competencies and qualifications, opening new opportunities for training, job and mobility (iii) the Adult Education sector will count with new instruments to improve the provision of Skills Audits, adapted to different assessment contexts and to the needs of disadvantaged adults.The envisage long term impact of the project will be a strengthening of the Upskilling Pathways and the Adult Education systems in Europe.

<< Background >>According to the UN, only 20% of global techwaste is recycled each year, despite 66% of the world’s population being covered by techwaste legislation. In Europe, households have shown little awareness on the so-called waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) or known as techwaste - each person produces 20 kgs of techwaste per year, and ONLY an average of 35% of it is recycled. Reaching the EU objective of 85% is impossible unless consumers’ action is taken seriously into consideration with widespread educational plans to enhance circular economy and material regeneration. This results in the huge loss of valuable and critical raw materials from the supply chain and causes serious health, environmental and societal issues through illegal shipments of waste to developing countries.In terms of detected needs, we can see how:- recipient adults of participating organisations usually buy many technological devices, but they never wonder about raw materials, the actual impact such devices have and how their “later life” is. Further, they need a better understanding of how to manage tech devices in order to improve their economic consumption as well as their environmental impact- adult educators want to improve their practices in digital education, making it more environmental friendly, while acquiring specific technical knowledge on different terms such as consumption, features, levels of energy etc.- adult centres need a more sustainable approach, leveraging circular economy peer-to-peer circuits of tech devices, so that it is possible to share the old ones or repair them or correctly segregate them. What is more, our staff shows lack of engagement in terms of tech devices management and consumption.Therefore, the shared need among groups is about finding a cooperative methodology to define a more sustainable way through which tech device management, repair and recycle is done, cutting down on the amount of produced techwaste.<< Objectives >>RE-PEER project [Peer-to-peer digital environmental and practical learning web app for techwaste reduction] aims to create the knowledge/competence foundation of the so-called Z and Y generations (<40) defined as “lost generations”. Plus, we want to turn adult education centres into “repair cafés”, and make them more sustainable and at the same time give a new practical perspective that can enhance mutual learning, solidarity and activate circular economy streams between SMEs, adult centres and policy makers in tech items dismissal.To concretely empower adults & adult educators in their everyday life, RE-PEER wants to:1) Develop a theoretical and practical framework of digital environmental learning/teaching for adult centres, defining the main pedagogical competencies for adult educators and the main circular economy competencies applied at tech waste correct management based on REUSE, REDUCE, RECYCLE. 2) Unify adult educators methodologies and training guidelines/materials for effective digital/environmental adult education and set up the main strategy lines to transform adult education centres as “repair cafés”.3) Make simple and at-hand training material for adult learners in reusing, reducing, recycling techwaste and to raise awareness of the WEEE problem orienteering them in everyday scenarios involving technology.4) Introduce a gamified pedagogical web app focused on everyday scenarios to trigger the interest of adults and make them acquainted with the concepts of circular economy competencies by testing and learning on everyday scenarios.<< Implementation >>RE-PEER is going to deploy activities along four main areas of work:1) Framework and methodology for circular economy for adult educators and adults.- We will engage with n.70 adults & n.35 adult educators to the definition of the different contexts related to reuse, reduce & recycle applied on techwaste by defining the most important everyday contexts for adults, the status of digital environmental competencies, the current European directives, and how to practically tackle environmentally unsustainable behaviours.- Definition of methodological aspects for adult educators through2) A methodology for the sustainable transformation of adult centres and training tools for adult educatorsC1 training of 18 trainers/adult educators (SL).3) Create online training material for adult learnersC2 training of 18 adults as interactive laboratory for adults to discuss and experiment recycling/repair/reuse scenarios (BG).4) A web-app on gamifying the recycling/repairing/reusing scenarios on techwasteLocal pilot testing with adults (70 in total)- Project Management Plan that will include guidelines on project management, time & resources allocation, etc.- Dissemination, Exploitation & Sustainability Plan: to outline and set an action plan for all the envisioned dissemination activities of the project, while it will also outline specific guidelines on how to secure the sustainability of the project after it completion.- Risk& Quality assurance plan;- 3 PM Meetings (SE, NL, ES) and 6 OnlineSkype Meetings. - ProgressReports on 6-month basis (activity, financial, evaluation and dissemination)- 7 MEs<< Results >>R1: circular economy & digital education framework for adult educators and adultsDevelop a theoretical and practical framework of digital environmental learning/teaching, taking into account informal and non-formal aspects of education, both for adult learners & educators. As basic framework, we will use a three-tier framework derived from the main concept of circular economy, namely: a) REDUCE [Competences to minimise the use of products and materials maintaining as long as possible]; b) REUSE [Competences to keep products and materials at their highest utility]; c) RECYCLE [Competences to use a product again (when it reaches the end of its life) creating further value]. Our challenge will be to frame it with the Digital European Framework (DigComp 2.1) related to tech product proper usage and management.R2. Methodology pack – Training for Trainers materials and guidelines for sustainable adult centres as “repair cafés”. This is intended as a tool box for trainers to improve adult education practices in environmental education through blended learning activities. R2 also has the methodology for adult educational centres to deploy strategies and tips to improve their techwaste management procedures and to set up “repair cafés” corners and engage adults in techwaste reduce, reuse, recycle (RRR) habits.R3: Create online training material for adult learners to raise awareness of techwaste and train them in RRR competencies pilot testing it on 70 Participants. The result is divided in 3 areas: REDUCE, REUSE & RECYCLE, focusing the training pattern both on everyday practices & on digital education with reference to the specific outcomes of the participatory part foreseen in R1 (as examples, fixing, repairing, tutorials on the correct usage of everyday digital tools, orienteering on item recycling etc.).