"This project embraces Social Inclusion, Innovative Practices in a Digital Era and Social and Educational value of European Cultural Heritage. Its main objective is innovation and the theme “MARKA: innovation and inclusion in the construction of an identity curriculum”. The partners are 4 schools from Portugal, Estonia, Italy and Cyprus, an NGO from Macedonia and FPCE from the University of Porto. About 2010 students from 8 to 18 years of age, 86 teachers, 1 senior researcher, 2 junior researchers, dozens of technicians and specialists in heritage, museological, environmental and artistic education participate directly in the project activities. Within each partner, it involves the collaborative work of dozens of educational staf members: school boards, international project team, intermediate leaders, project teams, pedagogical and administrative structures, technological teams, educational support services for students with fewer opportunities and teams of dissemination. In facilitating and follow-up activities, it involves dozens of decision-makers and external professionals linked to education, heritage and the environment, at local/regional/national and international level. It results from a collective effort to internationalize and innovate the educational service, and establishes 30 months for its completion and 2 years for impact assessment.Its objectives are: Innovative methodological procedures for inclusion, which strengthen the profile of the reflective teacher, able to face the educational challenges of the European Education Area and in the most innovative educational trends at European level in terms of curricular articulation and principles of outdoor education, digital education and heritage education; Promote the participation of partners from the educational territory to build an identity curriculum, qualifying the inclusive educational; Contribute to the development of the construction of learning tools that facilitate inclusion, with high transferability and sustainability; Contribute to the development of European education, through intellectual production in transnational cooperation, fulfilling the European Commission's goals for education.It involves 3TPM, 5LTTA, strategically and chronologically planned by profile and geographic location, whose triangulation embraces the EU countries, 6 Multipliers Events and 2 Intellectual Outputs. It is structured based on the formation of leaders in an international context and replication in terms of local activities. It considers the curriculum implementation processes, focusing on the development of Key Competences for Lifelong Learning, based on a participatory, experimental and action-research methodology, whose focus is the contribution of students in the construction of the curriculum and the creation of resulting outputs, the knowledge of a reality and its understanding, creativity and the application of critical sense and that have an impact on the local environment, an identity curriculum as a vehicle for local response to transnational social priorities and as an opportunity to implement a methodology that effect inclusion and that promotes innovation.With partners, this project allows qualifying, scientifically sustaining, disseminating, extending in space, to new contexts and territories, educational and over time, the MARKA Methodology, based on the pedagogical uses of the MARKA APP and Methodological Guide and improve them with new contributions from users.In addition to the development and consumption of good educational practices and innovative practices, it aims to impact on a local/regional/national/international level, which is why it has designed an ambitious Dissemination Plan that reconciles face-to-face contacts and digital potential. The products, results and Intelectual Outputs of this project are highly transferable, per se, ensuring the sustainability of the project.We understand that it triggers, in a holistic and systemic way, changes that reinforce the quality of the responses of European education systems to global challenges, in the immediate and long term. It responds effectively to the urgent needs of all schools in the EU: to improve, in terms of quality, innovation, excellence and internationalization; create INCLUSION strategies for a broad spectrum of its students, contributing to create a cohesive society; using European heritage to identify Europeans with their common past; changing educational paradigms to teaching-learning centered on the development of skills in students; to reinforce the professional profile of the entire teaching career; promote the alliance between school practices and research in education, in a transnational context; improve language learning and promote the EU's wide linguistic diversity and sensitivity to different cultures.It broadens horizons, offers new perspectives, under the Erasmus+ motto: ""Enriching lives, opening minds""."

"Evidence suggests that many adults are unaware of how their individual consumer attitude can possibly have impact in the economy, the environment and society and are also inadequately prepared to participate effectively in the market place. Having said that, consumer literacy is an important skill that all European citizens should develop in an early age, therefore consumers’ literacy in European schools is necessary in order to enable youngsters to make informed economic decisions in the future. Including economic and consumer education in the official school curriculum is considered one of the most efficient and fair ways to reach a whole generation, as it introduces concepts of money and ways to manage it well, while promoting wise spending and rational consumer behavior. Economic and consumer education can take place as a standalone subject or it can be included in specific subjects (i.e. mathematics, economics or social sciences, citizenship). Its inclusion through a crosscurricular approach can allow for the development of more diverse and potentially innovative and engaging ways to link economic and consumer literacy to more familiar topics for both students and teachers.One of today’s challenges is also the fact that young people tend to allow their “mood” to ultimately control their spending patterns, resulting in impulse buying, regardless of formal budgeting or plans. There is the identified need to urge young people, and more specifically students, as the ECOLES project will be implemented in the school setting, to consider the impact of choices on the well-being of others, as they lack critical awareness and understanding of concepts of social, or/and even ecological responsibility. Furthermore, in schools where consumer education is being taught as a secondary component of various disciplines, teachers often are either not concerned or do not have the capacity to teach consumer concepts closely related to their root discipline or presenting real life scenarios effectively to foster better understanding of the concepts in their students.The ECOLES project aims to contribute to the following European development strategies: Europe 2020 Strategy: Target 4 – Education and Target 5 – Fighting poverty and social exclusion, while raising awareness within the school setting on the risks of poor personal financial management and irrational consumer behavior. In addition it aims to contribute in achieving the ET 2020´s strategic objective 2 – Improving the quality and efficiency of education and training.The innovation of the project lies in the fact that that it provides useful and easy to use tools for students and trainers/teachers so as to be able to improve knowledge on economic and consumer related issues combine the ""game"" experience with a set of proposed exercises and approaches for enhanced results. The educational material will also target a new age group 7-18 year old pupils for which such material is not yet widely available. Also, the ECOLES virtual consumer manager will provide a challenging and entertaining learning environment that enables a self-guided learning process.The project activities foreseen in the project follow a simple logic and a coherent project management structure. In particular, the project begins with a comprehensive conceptualization and definition of the project framework. A ""State of Art on economic and consumer literacy level of knowledge of students” will be conducted in each partner country, involving the main target groups i.e. pupils 7-18 year old, school teachers, school leaders, trainers in consumer issues. This activity leads to the production of IO1. The partners will then focus on the development of educational material for students and guidelines for trainers constituting the content of the game for improving the economic and consumer literacy knowledge in European schools (IO2). Furthermore, the partnership will also develop a virtual consumer manager game (IO3) with various scenarios and different levels which will test the theoretical knowledge acquired. IO3 will be designed to be used as a form of a ""game"" even without prior training. The development of IO2 and IO3 will be grouped into three activities a) Design and Development, b) Piloting and testing and c) finalization. These outputs will also be available through the ECOLES website. In parallel with the aforementioned activities which are directly related to the intellectual outputs foreseen, the partners will implement horizontal activities, which will ensure the smooth project implementation, quality assurance and target group outreach. These are: 1. Project Management; 2. Quality Assurance and evaluation; 3. Dissemination and Exploitation."

It is accepted that people gaining qualifications has an impact on economic growth, and on promoting social inclusion and sustainable employment. Skills have become the key drivers of individual well-being and economic success in the 21st century. The pace of innovation, technological transformation, digitalization and globalisation requires all people to engage in lifelong learning for upskilling, re-qualification or skills updating purposes. Nowadays, there are no jobs for life, therefore lifelong learning (LLL) is crucial for people to acquire the necessary skills to stay employable. More than ever, LLL is the key to face globalisation and its challenges.This is exactly the focus of the project aimed to define and validate innovative models, approaches and tools supporting personalized, active and engaging adult learners' personal development processes, based on self-awareness, reflective and participate based learning models, preventing ESL and NEET phenomena, contemporaneously addressing:- Adults’ engagement and motivation by implementing self-awareness/evaluation tools, inclusive guidance and learning solutions supporting reflective, engaging and active behaviours;- Trainers guidance and learning role empowerment: by adopting the new framework for Competences which are defined as a combination of knowledge, skills and attitudes appropriate to the context. Key competences are those which all individuals need for personal fulfillment and development, active citizenship, social inclusion and employment.The project goes one step further for the results of the T4TEMP project and is dealing with the following main key competences: a) Personal, social and learning to learn; b) Citizenship; c) Entrepreneurship; d) Cultural awareness and expression and e) Digital. Although the key competences are all considered equally important, because each of them can contribute to a successful life in a knowledge society, the partnership has selected the aforementioned competences as they are more close to their experience and professional capacity.The overall aim is to bring adult educators and adults’ learners together in the face of new societal challenges towards a brighter, more connected future. The objective of STONE is to work and focus on the number of adult educators who work with NEETs and vulnerable groups with adult learners, by upgrading their skills through:- the adaptation of the T4TEMP training courses with new key competences framework (Targeted Training Package for Adult Educators -Working with NEET groups IO2- validated within a wide piloting framework, in all partners countries (RO, EE; IR; CY; GR; LT) - a Capacity Building Training Course on new key competences (IO1) with 4 different skill levels: introductory, intermediate, advanced and expert, - an Assessment Tool on self-evaluation and learning personalization (IO3) for both target groups, - a Good Practices Toolbox for upskilling adult educators and NEETs (IO4). The project's expected results are the following: •Partners will understand better what NEETs need in order to be integrated into the society and the labour market.•Partners gain an in-depth understanding of good practices in engaging NEET through counselling, training and employability opportunities in the project countries.•Partners support improving the Quality and Innovation of NEET engagement methodologies in training systems, institutions and practices.•Partners will gain in-depth understanding in engaging NEETs through internal adjustments in labour offices, NGOs, career guidance offices, public authorities etc.•Increased level of skills and competences of educators, objectively proven by validation and certification of acquired skills.The expected impact includes the following:- Highlighting the importance of new key competences to the training of NEETs and the adult educators;- The usefulness of these materials for educators, teachers, counselors, youth workers;- Improve the position of NEETs in the labour market through the training on new key competences;- Understanding and recognition of skills and qualifications in European and beyond, as well as interconnections between formal, formal education, vocational training and other forms of learning and labour market respectively;- Improve the quality of training material for educators, teachers, counselors, youth workers;- Increase the professional competences of adult educators, teachers, counselors, youth workers;- Strengthen the engagement of adult trainers;- Improve the position and social perception of NEETs in the labour market and education;- Improve the social and professional development of NEETs;- Strengthening of occupational/career profiles of job seekers and young adult professionals;- Increase motivation of NEETs (people with disadvantaged background and fewer opportunities) to learn by providing information on validation of non-formal & informal learning.

Lifelong learning has become an essential part of EU´s response to challenges that derive from globalisation, increased competition and the need for sustainable development and social cohesion. The NEWS project has identified effective preventative interventions for educators and adult trainers to become more up-skilled and up-to-date professionals who could be attractive for the nowadays students and adult learners. The project aims to introduce innovative ways to adult educators for reaching out to young and adult learners in the topics like media, critical thinking and languages; also for inclusion and reintegration of young people on the pathway toward an employment and further education on their way becoming adult educators.More specifically, according to SA Kutsekoda (Chamber of Certification) there are only 439 adult educators with existing certificate as adult educator or andragogue, most of adult educators are older than 50 years old. Therefore, there is utmost importance to find ways to increase the number of the adult education by motivating young people or new in the adult education field to become adult educator and train them in the topics like media, critical thinking and languages. Supporting empoyment of young people and ensuring their social and economic participation are already key issues on the agenda of all EU countries. Also, as most of adult educators are elderly people, they are lacking knowledge and skills of innovative teaching methods, especially of using computers and social media.NEWS project aims to increase participation of the younger people into labour market and in education through up-skilling existing adult educators in effective engagement methodologies, increasing awareness among non-educators about attractive possibilities of becoming adult educators. The secondary aim is to get general overview of the needs of the existing adult educators so that they could do marvelous work and give innovative classes/lectures/courses among general population.Adult educators, trainers, etc knowledge regarding innovative skills is limited. Critical thinking is not included in any syllabus or curriculum. Media and ICT are taught to the younger people, but elderly people are left out and their skills are perished.The objective of the project is to give the possibility to educators and trainers for better and more targeted provisions of services through the use of tools which will be implemented under the project. To achieve the above aims the project will implement the following objectives:- Identification of the needs of the existing adult trainers and educators;- Development of an on-line e-Learning Toolkit for the general methodology how to include critical thinking into syllabus of languages, ICT and media with examples;- Development of an on-line manual for training new educators. The use of specific tools would enable the target group to allocate their time with each one of the people who could be in need of their counselling in a more constructive and effective way, via mobilizing internet technologies.- Development and implementation of targeted courses, which enable adult educators to support and improve the skills of new adult educators. The practical training courses give possibility to get more personal communication between adult educators and possibly new adult educators by also up-skilling both target groups knowledge in topics of media, ICT and languages.The partners of the consortium aspire to facilitate the work of the target groups and fostering the delivery of more targeted services to people who are looking towards the job and training as adult educators, with the vision that the adult educator field of the participating countries can be more effective and more satiscatory for the general population participating in adult education.The main target groups of the project is addressing are existing adult educators with the need to up-skill their competences; and new educators with the need to be active in empoyment, training, etc in order to provide better assistance and motivated training courses for the learners.For all participants regarding selection, relevance to the content of the project (i.e. pilot testing) will be the primary focus. Any individual that has an interest in learning, sharing and/or participating in the project activities or being informed about the activities will be engaged. The engagement of the partners’ networks and the associated partners that have direct links with target groups is the most importance. Each partner involved, using criteria such as: knowledge, labor market-related background, time available, language and ICT skills etc., will select the participants to participate in the activities.