"Museums are currently patrimonial agents that act transversally on the social and cultural context in which they are located, adding to their traditional functions of conservation and exhibition of the legacy they safeguard, those that respond to their role as institutions of reference in the field of education and citizen participation. Thus, in the European Year of Cultural Heritage, the Project aimed to evaluate and agree on the policies developed by the Museums for the recruitment, training and enhancement of their Volunteering. Civil society is empowered in the Museums through specific programs of Non-Formal Education for Adults, a sector of the citizenship that is totally interested in culture and that presents undertaking indicators.For this reason, The Roman Studies Foundation undertook this Project in order to know and share practices and working methods on these educational programs for adults at an international level in centers of recognized competence.The selection of partners included The National Museum of Roman Art (MNAR), the only center in the Iberian Peninsula, for its monographic dedication to the study of the ancient Roman colony Augusta Emerita. Besides, The Association of Friends of the Museum, with more than three decades of experience, is the civil agent through which the group of MNAR Volunteers originates and organizes. In addition, the Project has two other European partners that will make it possible to develop exchange and learn about other practices at the European level in this field, as well as to strengthen the Work Networks between reference Museums at a transnational level. These are The Museum of the Imperial Forums in Rome and The National Museum of Archeology in Lisbon.The Project followed a working method that allowed, in the first instance, a very fruitful exchange of experiences between the responsible Trainers in each partner organization, through the 4 Transnational Meetings held.At the same time, a communication program was started with the development of its own Website to publicize it: https://learningandteachingmuseums.eu/On the other hand, an evaluation program was carried out that aimed to carry out a general diagnosis on the average profile of the volunteer groups and its incidence in the activity of the Museums, to later evaluate the training programs and their results on the activities carried out.The evaluation made it possible to define three different models of volunteering, conditioned in part by the legislative framework of each country itself, and focused on three of its main functions, which complement each other, that is: training (Lisbon program), professionalization (Rome model) and participation (Mérida model). On the other hand, the impact and opinion of the program on the volunteers themselves was evaluated through questionnaire tasks (with questions like ""smile text"", ""open"" questions, and “open and closed” questions), to measure the opinion of the general public and of the program participants themselves, on 'Competencies, suitability and functions of volunteering'. All competencies obtain high scores, between 3.1 and 3.9 (out of 4). A second aspect studied has been the subjective perception of the high or low level of competencies necessary to be a volunteer, both for any unknown person and for our vision of ourselves.All the accumulated experience, as well as the legislative content necessary to contextualize the Cultural Volunteering programs, were described in a Final Document ‘GOOD PRACTICES FOR TRAINING VOLUNTEERS’, available on the Project Website and on the Erasmus+ Project Results Platform: https://learningandteachingmuseums.eu/index.php/documents/The direct participants in the Project have been, in the first place, the technical teams of the partner organizations (12 people) as well as the groups of volunteers involved (10 volunteers in Lisbon, 52 in Rome and 21 in Mérida). In addition, experts in museum policy have been involved (4 people). Finally, the development of joint public activities has allowed up to the present time to reach an impact of 264 people, through views on the MNAR YouTube Channel.The knowledge acquired through the exchanges of good practices, their formalization in a Final Document as well as the continuity of the training programs in the partner organizations will allow the long-term development of new high-quality programs dedicated to the training of Adults in the field of Museums."

"The project ""Apprenticeship Inter-network: Bringing together VET institutions and enterprises through a Network of Career Hubs"" (AppInternN) aims to strengthen the links between Apprenticeship, VET and corporate responsibility, inviting employers to offer apprenticeships and jobs to VET students and graduates, as well as share information about the national and international labour markets' state-of-play, current skill requirements and occupational/sectoral developments (including such key issues as reskilling and upskilling). Employers can thus play an active role in the preparation of students and graduates for their future careers. The project is focused on the creation of an online platform titled ""Apprenticeship Inter-Network"", which will host three national Career Hubs (Greek, Italian, and Spanish). Each Career Hub (CH) will facilitate the students' and graduates' search for apprenticeships or jobs through relevant databases, enhance their competences and skills by offering guidance and organizing or announcing special events (seminars, webinars, information events, study visits, presentations, job fairs, etc.), support their contact and collaboration with employers and other labour market stakeholders, ensure their familiarization with important sectoral issues, etc. It is to be noted that, within the context of the project, VET-related institutions and associations, social partner institutes, Municipalities, and Chambers will contribute to the efficiency of Career Hubs by inviting local enterprises, employers and employer associations to join the CH databases in order to be directly networked with apprentices, graduates and future employees. A particularly innovative aspect of the project consists in the establishment of a new intermediary role: that of the “Business Ambassadors”, namely established professionals, employers or other business staff members who will inform/advise students and graduates on current labour market needs and trends, occupational “problem-solving”, business development prospects, etc. The Business Ambassadors will support CHs as volunteers, thus demonstrating both their personal and their businesses' interest in corporate social responsibility.Just as importantly, the project will greatly benefit disadvantaged groups of students and graduates, such as disabled young people and young people living in remote geographical areas etc., who have limited access to labour-market information and the labour market itself. The proposed project can thus be said to constitute a genuinely inclusive form of networking and labour market integration.As stated, all three CHs will be interconnected within the framework of a transnational online platform, titled ""Apprenticeship Inter-Network"" (AIN). Users of each national CH (which will be bilingual: EL/EN, IT/EN, ES/EN) will have the chance to be informed about developments in the other two countries, thus ensuring a direct exchange of good practices, expertise, information and knowledge about work-based learning, Apprenticeship, and labour market integration. Moreover, it is a conscious objective of the project partners to see the AppInternN include more EU countries and relevant institutions in its e-community, which will recognize its practical utility and further contribute to the promotion of Apprenticeship as a way of enhancing youth employability throughout the European Union."

SMARTICIPATE is a data-rich citizen dialogue system, transforming public data into new intelligence, and transposing elements of intelligent ICT development to urban governance. The aim is to integrate bottom-up processes in the realm of city planning, using the full potential of citizens by sharing ideas in the co-production of decision making. smarticipate thereby transforms interaction between citizens, businesses and public administrations in the management of cities, providing a must-have tool that improves cities’ performance, leverages government-citizen relationships, reduces burdens on government via co-production of tasks, and saves money through increased efficiency of processes. As a consequence, citizens get full access to public open data and feedback on their neighborhood-related and citywide ideas for city development. This is achieved in a playful, digital dialogue based on the creation of an open, easy accessible platform. This allows government, NGOs, businesses and citizens to develop their own apps as producers and co-producers. As a result, citizens are empowered to play active roles in the public domain, to develop new tools and to generate new public services, thereby making major contributions to Europe 2020 strategies for smart, sustainable and inclusive growth in Europe’s cities. SMARTICIPATE platform contains two generic components and functions: • To create an interactive model for impact assessment with the ability to modify the modelled objects, to understand the impacts of citizen-centric urban planning; • To create a user interaction tool (web-server) that enables structured interaction with users and communities. smarticipate offers real world solutions developed and tested in Hamburg, Rome and London, that are fully effective and implementable, as well as sustainable in the long term. These three pilot city demonstrations are transferable to all cities throughout Europe, supporting a fully sustainable business model.