Youth unemployment is one of the mayor problems Europe is facing, unemployment levels among young adults are very high. In 2016, more than 6,3 million young people (aged 15-24 years) were neither in employment nor in education or training (NEETs) in the EU. In most EU countries, youth unemployment rates doubles overall unemployment rates. The EC communication “Investing in Europe´s Youth” indicates that action is needed to provide: Better opportunities to access employment; Better opportunities through education and training and Better opportunities for solidarity, learning mobility and participation. YSM addresses all 3 areas. There is an Increased need for skills, competences and knowledge related to digitally enhanced design and manufacturing, such as 3D printing, laser cutting, design thinking and prototyping. These skills are highly demanded in the labour market and will become more relevant in the years to come. At the same time, the labour market demands versatile employees capable of working in teams and contribute to innovation. Co-creation, co-design and cooperation skills are pivotal thus for employability. All these skills are related to what is known as the “maker” culture, an environment in which different skills and competences come together, taking maximum advantage of digital tools, software and machinery to co-create, co-design and develop innovative products or services. Fablabs or living labs have been growing fast in the last years. Despite the fact that these entities can provide the connection with the demands of the labour market and with methods which are very well suited for young people, their users tend to be adults and collaboration with young people and the VET system is not developing at the same pace. YSM addresses these challenges by developing a coherent programme which reaches young people enrolled in the VET system, and provides them with the aforementioned skills and competences, through a cascaded approach in which they are reached through their teachers and schools. Integrating the programme into the school activities (either as curricular or extra-curricular activities) increase the reach of the programme, and the supervision and guidance of teachers ensures adequate take-up and acquisition of the envisaged skills and competences. A parallel development in society is the increased social awareness and consciousness at all levels of society (and especially among young people) about the social and environmental impact of their actions and decisions. In this line, there is growing social awareness for the challenges faced by those with special needs, e.g. with physical impairments, elderly, etc. Social inclusion and full integration of these groups in society is a focal point in European and national policies, especially in view of an ageing population. YSM acts at the cross roads the described challenges, by providing a programme which provides VET students with highly demanded skills and competences, allowing them to put these into practice developing a social object, artefact or prototype which contributes and alleviates the challenges faced by people with special needs in their every life. This can only be achieved with proper guidance and support and ensuring that the skills and competences are acquired properly. The programme can thus not exist without the involvement of teachers who need to transmit the knowledge and guide the learning process. As such YMS puts emphasis on their role. They will need to similar types of skills and competences as their students so as to be able to transfer this knowledge to them. Although specific teachers might have knowledge and skills on a particular component of the technical skills, e.g. 3D printing, they need a more comprehensive and wider set of skills to be able to implement the programme with their students. YOUNG SOCIAL MAKERS lays the foundations for a learning programme in the field of education for students in VET, and give them the knowledge, skills and competences to ideate, design and prototype social objects which cover the needs of people with special needs, using digitally enhanced manufacturing tools and machinery, such as 3D printing, laser cutting, rapid prototyping and design thinking. At the same time they will acquire, through working together on the social objects, co-creation, co-design and co-operation skills (horizontal skills in high demand by the labour market).

The rules of modern European society are changing. People want to have an active role in defining the way they live, the way they learn, the way they work, the way they interact. They are shaping the world and helping it to grow and develop through the creation of new ideas, partnerships and businesses. With the development of social technologies, the opportunities for budding entrepreneurs also grow. As was reported in the E-Skills Manifesto, 2014, “ICT induces social phenomena such as mass collaboration, social media and crowdsourcing [which] is reshaping social interaction and work processes.” Crowd-funding in particular is emerging as a dynamic system in which prospective entrepreneurs can find non-traditional funding sources to bring their dreams into reality. However, there are a number of persistent barriers to entrepreneurialism and in particular the use of crowd-funding. First of all, not all Europeans have the skills needed, even where the technologies exist. Developing skills that foster innovation and entrepreneurial initiative are becoming more and more critical. In-demand skills of the future include “innovation, questioning, challenging, dreaming, imagining, experimenting, learning and enterprising” (E-Skills Manifesto, 2014) as well as “idea generation, problem solving, critical thinking, and cross-cultural communication” (H2020 EAG SC6). As a result, new approaches and training systems are required to help Europeans acquire the 21st century skills that are needed for innovation and entrepreneurship. This project will focus on the following area: How women, by acquiring the skills needed for the 21st Century, can use crowd-funding successfully in order to take an active role in entrepreneurialism and innovation. By providing training and opportunities for virtual and trans-national collaboration between participants, this proposal aims to foster the participation of women in successful entrepreneurial growth. The main objective of WaW project is to facilitate more effective provision of collective business and innovation support services to ensure women understand and take advantage of the opportunities offered by new ICT tools. Specific objectives of the proposed project are: • Improve access to knowledge, increase levels of co-operation and competence regarding ICT tools process and methods • Networking of society-support facilities to set up mechanisms for developing, sharing and disseminating effective approaches in supporting innovative entrepreneurship, as well as openness to new technologies • Develop a training tool that will acquire competences and skills by adults • Pooling expertise in networks to help adults to solve legal, organizational and human capital issues associated with innovation processes • Improve the qualification of female adults through the promotion of a series of transversal skills like creativity, initiative, problem solving, risk assessment and decision taking • Improve public awareness on good practice examples regarding crowd-funding • Promote continuous learning training in workplace • Increase awareness of innovation and technology approaches to combat difficulties and setback during the innovation generation process The above actions will be achieved through: • A structured survey, which will attempt to identify how the skills of the 21st century can be acquired • A structured survey that will attempt answer the elements and issues that need to be included in a crowd–funding campaign so that it will be a successful one • Handbook on how the different target groups can acquire these skills • e-learning courses for acquiring the skills • Handbook on how a crowd-funding campaign be a successful one • e-learning courses for mastering the art of successful crowd-funding • A platform to facilitate trans-national networking and collaboration • A piloting activity of crowd–funding campaigns of the women who have acquired the above set of skills in order to make their dreams reality • An evaluation procedure on crowd-funding process and the end results This project will foster participation of women from among many different backgrounds, ethnicities, ages, nationalities and levels of education, specifically targeting unemployed, immigrant and older women. By doing so, this project aims to make a long-lasting impact by providing the tools to empower women who have the potential to make social and economic imprint, but may otherwise lack the opportunity to bring their dreams into a reality. Moreover, this project takes place transnationally in order to address the diverse set of skills across the EU, while also addressing common complex problems that can inhibit growth and innovation. This will enable the project to take into consideration cultural and social differences and respond to the needs of as many EU regions as possible.

Integrating deaf people into the job market is a key challenge; more than 50 % of the 1 million deaf people in Europe are unemployed, and those who are employed are often in low-skilled and low-paid jobs.Access to digital jobs and professional VET programs in ICT for deaf and hard-of-hearing people is severely affected by the lack of proper field-specific terminology in the different sign languages, although the needs analysis conducted previously to the submission of this proposal has highlighted a rising trend in deaf entrepreneurship within the digital and ICT sector (ref. field research carried out by the project “Deaf Enterprise”, KA2 2016-1-UK01-KA202-024361, see innovation and complementarity section).The employment rate in ICT is going through a really positive trend in the last years; in fact, according to Eurostat, the number of ICT specialists in the EU grew by 39.1 % from 2011 to 2018, over 6 times as high as the increase (6.5 %) for total employment (shorturl.at/bepE0).As with any other language, lexical wealth of sign languages gets updated in accordance with use and diffusion of terms. New lexical resources for digital and ICT are lagging behind in sign languages, due to the common but misguided myth that written text can be sufficient for deaf people to understand and being able to express themselves, particularly with regards to the field of digital and ICT. According to the European Federation of Hard of Hearing People, there are 52 million European citizens affected by hearing disabilities of any kind, and national sign languages are to be considered their mother tongues. Access to sign languages is comparable to a Human Right, allowing them to be fully included in the daily life of their society. As such, the existing lexicon gap in the digital and ICT domain of sign languages has to be overcome in order to guarantee equal opportunities in accessing the ‘digital community’ of professionals for people with hearing disabilities.The project aims to develop the “EU Digital Framework for Sign Languages”, i.e. an analytical and descriptive database providing the main sign language resources in is (international sign) related to the lexical domain of digital and ICT. The framework will be mainly represented by an e-glossary containing at least 500 lemmas in IS, distributed in five key digital subdomains: 1.Computer science; 2.Cloud networking; 3.Internet of Things (IoT); 4.Artificial Intelligence (AI) and robotics5.Audiovisual and media production. Each entry of the glossary will be augmented with a short video showing how to properly sign it plus additional information like etymology, usage scenarios and situational contexts. Where a lexical gap is detected, new signs will be developed according to the current rules of new signs formation. Apart from the language academic interest, this project pursues the full integration of D/deaf individuals into professional and VET contexts with a degree of digital/ICT intensity. Therefore, the results are thought to be used and adopted by both D/deaf and hearing people, to favour the spread of deaf culture and encourage dialogue and inclusion. To this end, the “Guidelines for the inclusion of D/deaf workers in digital and ICT settings” will be delivered in the final stage of the project.The main target group is represented by D/deaf individuals about to enter the job market in the fields of digital and ICT, then also engaged in VET related training programmes. As a secondary indirect TG, the project encourages the uptake of results by VET trainers, employers and entrepreneurs in the field, sign language interpreters and schools, associations for the inclusion of people with hearing disabilities, who will benefit from project results.

In general, small businesses are more vulnerable and have less opportunities to compete with large transnational companies while also tackling the adverse effects of climate change. It can be even more severe in case of businesses exposed to the phenomenon of seasonality, especially in the rural areas. Innovative digital solutions can provide efficient tools to overcome these challenges. However, people (owners, managers, employees) involved in these types of businesses (small enterprises, individual entrepreneurs, craftsmen, seasonal greengrocers etc.) very often have only low or medium level of IT knowledge. Furthermore, contrary to multinational companies, these businesses neither have the opportunity to employ experts in online marketing/IT/environment protection, nor have time and budget to educate themselves in these areas. Additionally, there are less opportunities concerning finding expertise and learning opportunities in the countryside than in the cities.The overall objective of the #keepup project is to develop a training package for these target groups covering (1) digital entrepreneurial competences, (2) e-commerce and (3) climate adaptation. The partnership would like to spread innovative practices in the digital era and prepare the stakeholders how to benefit from the advantages of digitalisation. The importance of e-commerce is significant as the market is expected to continue to grow, and traditional shopping habits are changing, especially due to the current external effects. Moreover, climate change causes a shift in travel behaviour, not to mention its effects on agriculture, environment and seasons. With the developed learning materials, even small, rural businesses affected by seasonality can be more competitive, more open to sustainability and more flexible on climate-adaptation.From the four intellectual outputs of the project, three will create training modules in the three main topics. The fourth IO will not only cover the development and testing of an innovative learning platform, but the partnership will also create a manual and a handbook for facilitating its use as paying attention to the possible lack of IT knowledge of the adult trainees.The #keepup team consists of expert partners interested in adult education from 5 different countries. The Lead Partner is the Hungarian Neumann which has great experiences in the field of digital competences and in developing training and e-learning materials for businesses. They also have experience in project coordination and collaborations on national and international level. Neumann will be the main coordinator and will be responsible for the overall quality of the project.The Hungarian CAM will be the leader of the climate adaptive entrepreneurial knowledge module. CAM has participated in several international projects and is currently coordinating an Erasmus+ project. CAM has developed numerous training materials in the recent years, prepared an online learning platform with international partners, and organised adult education trainings in various subjects, such as sustainability and RES.The Italian DLEARN is an EU-wide network made of 27 different organizations. They will be responsible for digital competences module. DLEARN is active in the field of education and digital learning at various levels, collecting practices and ideas to reflect, think and trigger new initiatives, with special attention to entrepreneurial learning and education.The Slovenian BSC, as a regional development agency with over 20 years of experience in EU funded projects, is aimed at sustainability and climate change adaptation to develop the region. BSC is not only an ideal partner to contribute to the materials, but also an influential organisation with a widespread network that can enhance our dissemination activities.The Slovakian CCIS will coordinate the e-commerce module, as they have deep knowledge on the topic: they actively helped some of their members to develop their e-commerce business providing consultancy on legislation, logistic and SEO. Moreover, CCIS has a broad experience in educational and training programmes and in the successful implementation of international projects.The Spanish FUNTESO will be responsible for the development of the e-learning platform, as they have serious experience in designing education and training platforms. The organization provides digital literacy trainings, workshops and other events, and has participated in several national and international projects.Concerning the dissemination activities, CCIS will be responsible for the coordination with the help of DLEARN, but all PPs will actively contribute with inputs and by spreading the project in their partner network. The partnership efforts will result in the multiplier effect of the results and getting in touch with local stakeholders. All PPs will hold two multiplier events: once half-time, and then at the end of the project.