In the post-COVID-10 era, Europe has to keep up with innovative ideas to ensure a sustainable and inclusive recovery. “If we choose to hold on to the innovator’s path…we have to focus on people, places and processes.” (European Political Strategy Centre Strategic Notes, 2017)In the last months, we witnessed the creation of a stronger sense of community and people supporting each other and their communities. Amid the COVID-19 crisis, supporting communities and people and promoting their development is essential. The partners of the Count Me In project focused on improving learning opportunities for low-skilled adults, especially from the disadvantaged groups, such as unemployed young people and adults with special needs to improve their life chances, promote their inclusion, and connect members of a community to support it flourishing. The main objectives of the project were to: 1) support development of a quality learning offer in the field of adult education focusing on learning outcomes and learner responsibility and autonomy; 2) promote the use of technology in educational and civil participation processes, 3) provide all interested stakeholders – adult learners, educational centres, civil organisations, decision-makers - with an access to open and innovative teaching/learning tools through the SMART platform; 4) foster the international cooperation of organisations active in adult education and civil participation focusing on active inclusion of the youth and people with special needs.Employing technology maximizes teaching /learning efficiency, encourage active participation of the disadvantaged groups in society processes and, consequently, make them able to better their environment – on personal and community level - transforming it into smart. Even basic digital competences combined with imagination empower ordinary people to design solutions for problems in their environment, making it smarter, conserving resources, and optimizing free time. The project partners sought to raise curiosity of adult learners about the world; help them to understand that they are a main chain in the change process; plant the seeds of the knowledge sharing best practices and working out new creative solutions. Within the project, the partnership 1) designed a SMART platform, an open education resource; 2) designed and deployed a training for trainers and an e-course for adult educators in order to improve their digital and professional competences; 3) designed an e-course for adult learners and organise piloting in partner countries targeting young people and people with special needs in order to improve their digital skills and civic literacy to be able to make “smart” changes; 4) improved attractiveness and access of the disadvantaged groups to new career paths in the field of digital technologies and sustainable community developmentThe strategical partnership pursued the creation of an international network where the partners were able to share information on Smart practices on personal/community levels to find cost-saving tech-solutions. The project was carried out transnationally in order to acquire already contrasted knowledge and, thus, to be able to adapt and apply this synthesized knowledge for future actions on personal/community levels. The developed transversal and longitudinal courses created synergies between knowledge fields. The results of the project are available on the website www.countmein.eu. The developed SMART platform provides an open access to teaching and learning materials for both adult learners and adult educators or volunteers working in this field. All the teaching and learning materials were developed in English and partner languages and are freely accessible for anybody interested in the topic.

ContextOur world is changing, and we need to adapt to new realities of knowledge, society, and education. Technology has fundamentally changed our idea of community and the ways in which we interact with each other, so that building individual networks for learning and support is more important than ever before. The Internet has broken down many barriers of space and time, allowing us to rethink the way that we learn, work and connect; we now operate within more fluid and complex networks of people from around the globe. The Internet also provides cheaper, freer access to an enormous amount of information and educational content. Learning can be done anywhere, at any time, and by anyone.With the context of the above, this project aims:- to support youth workers to develop a positive attitude towards digital citizenship- to promote the development of responsible, ethical, global citizens for the digitalised and connected the world we live in- to establish the DICIPASS 4YOUTH programme and Code of Conduct among youth organisations, youth workers and young people as a binding agreement- to pilot test the idea of the DICIPASS CHALLENGE PROGRAMME where young people follow various challenges in order to be AWARDED the DICIPASS4YOUTH BADGE showing excellence in digital citizenship values, knowledge, skills and understanding.- To offer opportunities for the acquisition of digital citizenship competencies among youth works thus strengthening their profiles and upgrading the quality of youth work.Two are the main target groups:- the direct target group is YOUTH WORKERS whose profiles will be upgraded and strengthened through the professional development programme to be developed to acquire the essential skills to support, protect and educate young people. They are key agents who can influence young people and ensure they have necessary digital skills and understanding of online safety.- the indirect target group is YOUNG PEOPLE (14-18 years old) with a specific focus on young people with fewer opportunities (including NEETs, marginalized, with a migrant background, including newly arrived immigrants and young refugees, early school leavers etc.).Based on the effects of digitalisation around the world it is essential for the project to be implemented transnationally.The project pioneers to design a COMPLETE TOOL KIT and an EDUCATIONAL PACK for developing, implementing and monitoring various INCLUSIVE strategies for promoting digital citizenship competencies. It also pioneers in developing an ASSESSMENT TOOL for the formative and on-going type of reflective and digital assessment of their habits, behaviour, attitudes and values.The consortium of strong and experienced partners from Germany, Greece, Lithuania, Cyprus and Belgium is committed to delivering the six Intellectual Outputs with high quality in an efficient and effective implementation and management plan. The consortium envisions to disseminate the project’s products and results to various levels starting from the local, to the regional to the national and also to the European Level. The use of the opportunities provided by the Erasmus+ programme for learning, teaching and training will offer the opportunity to a great number of participants to attend the blended learning programmes organised in four countries, as well as the Short Term Joint Staff Training and the Blended Mobility of Young People.The main results and impacts that are envisaged are:- Increased capacity of youth workers to use innovative resources in promoting digital citizenship competence and values among young people with fewer opportunities.- Increased awareness and enriched competences of young people to deal with sensitive ethical issues in their everyday life and make wise decisions regarding their personal data, rights, respect etc.- Increased capacity of young people with fewer opportunities to express their views and participate and have access to the digital world with dignity and respect.

CONTEXTEarly leaving from education and training (ELET) is a serious issue in many EU countries and has attracted the attention of many researchers, policy-makers and educators. Although the situation varies between countries and the underlying reasons for leaving early differ from student to student, the process leading up to it has a number of common elements.According to the report of Eurycide and Cedefop, “Tackling Early Leaving from Education and Training in Europe: Strategies, Policies and Measures” (2014), one out of seven young Europeans leaves the education system presenting a lack of skills and qualifications necessary to prepare them for the labor market. Currently, more than 4 million young people in Europe are classified as early school leavers, only 40% of whom are employed.In the last two years, due to the pandemic, this problem has been emphasized, especially as regards Italy, one of the worst countries in Europe.Research shows that leaving education early leads to reduced opportunities in the labor market and an increased likelihood of unemployment, socio-economic disadvantage, health problems, as well as reduced participation in political, social, and cultural activities.On the other hand, abundant research indicates that a higher level ofn education can lead to a series of positive outcomes for the individual as well as for society. The benefits of young people staying longer in school are improved employment prospects, higher salaries, better health, less crime, improved social cohesion, lower public and social costs, and higher productivity and growth.Dealing with the underlying causes of early leaving and developing ways to overcome them has become a central issue in Europe.OBJECTIVESThe overall goal of motivatEyoUth is to develop a multi-intervention program for youth and youth workers and focus on the early school leaving phenomenon, to reduce the factors that create it and draw direct and indirect actions towards the target groups. MotivatEyoUth is based on two key pillars: Early School Leaving (ESL) Prevention and Intervention; through the project, prevention actions for youth prone to present high-risk behaviors was developed, as well as intervention measures and actions for youth classified as Early Leavers from Education and Training” (ELET), to prevent, remedy and reduce Early School Leaving. TARGET GROUPThe main target groups of the project have been young people between 14 -18 years old and youth 18-24, classified as Early Leavers from Education and Training & experts; teachers, educators, youth workers, trainers, social workers, healthcare professionals, coaches, social workers etc.It is estimated that more than 1200 youth and experts have been involved, directly and indirectly within the project activities, and around 90.000 have been achieved, through dissemination activities, during the three years of the project.ACTIVITIESFour main Intellectual Outputs are been designed and developed: O1: Experts Programme Toolkit O2: Online game “Journey to your Future” O3: ICT Tool for Competence Assessment O4: Online educational platform The project results are available in English, Italian, Greek, Polish, Portuguese and Spanish languages. They are developed in such a way and method so as to have the availability to be transferred and adjusted appropriately to other EU countries in the future.RESULTS AND IMPACT Youth involved in the project have been developing digital skills; they have been motivated and encouraged to continue on education and training through innovative material, tools, and activities; they have been developing their interest in Educational opportunities and other opportunities in entering the labor market Experts and other stakeholders have increased their awareness of ESL, the factors that create it, and the risks that derive from it; they have new educational tools and methods that will be applicable in their daily work and will support them in addressing the risks and issues raised by ESL/ELET (both for prevention as well as intervention purposes); they have been the development of their digital skills and opportunity to make better use of digital technology. Partner organizations have updated, improve & widen their educational and training offer, putting their competitiveness ahead; they have new tools that will be applicable to their daily work; they have exchanged know-how and define the best practices in the field of ESL/ELET so as to incorporate them into the project products; they have participated in an international network across diverse professional fields and gain expertise in a demanding and important field.

Small NGOs (SNGOs, <15 employees) in Europe are facing rising operating costs in terms of new skills to acquire, accelerating competition for public funds, and shrinking government support, particularly in countries suffering from nationalism and restricting laws. SNGOs are facing higher operational costs and worse visibility (particularly with regards to refugee support). At the same time, in 2018 the EU Commission launched a plan to protect European values having a special focus on NGOs, launching a new Justice, Rights and Values Fund aimed at strengthening civil society facing several threats in several member states. In fact, as also the Fundamental Rights Agency stated in the same year, European civil groups are far from reaching sustainable long-term financing – this is expressed in short-term projects or in not-qualified personnel doing the fund-raising. As such, every year SNGOs face to quit as they cannot plan ahead – this is transversal in Europe and particularly evident in Southern states. The project regards particularly to the dramatic data regarding financial and digital education – 1 out of 3 adult Europeans are not sufficiently equipped to reach satisfactory digital competencies or with sufficient financial literacy. e-PATTERNS (E-learning platform for up-skilling in fund-raising practice, financial digital literacy in NGO management) wants to support poorly- ICT-equipped SNGO practitioners (30+ years old) who need to be up-re-skilled in ICT & financial literacy (budgeting, planning ahead, choosing products (brand) and using independent advice )to develop strategic competencies in fund-raising, crucial for the development of any social project. Gender makes the situation even more dramatic, both in Italy and in the rest of the partner countries. Fund-raising (as financial literacy) requires a broad approach - entrepreneurial techniques, financial analysis, digital knowledge and branding are required for social projects. Differently, SNGOs often see fund-raising just as limited tool to finance something, and not a permanent strategic activity that regards entrepreneurship strategies, financial and digital positioning as well as digital marketing techniques.e-PATTERNS aims to up-re-skill adult SNGOs practitioners (30+ years old) to support their work in fund-raising and strategic digital positioning through new technologies, developing a web-platform to help strategical planning and to incubate projects in a sustainable way, creating also a self-assessment tool to analyse the state of digitisation within the organisation. Indeed, the project wants to support concrete SNGOs projects in each partner country, improving also working flexibility of adults in SNGOs which face the hop-in/hop-out problem with regards to job market.Specific objectives:- Train low-skilled adults and develop their competences in financial literacy/fund-raising through simplified ICT tools developing a Step-by-Step Educational Framework connected to Open Badges System (OBS) to be tested/complete through two specific training sessions during the project life time;- Support local projects incubating them through fund-raising preparatory actions (or through crowd-funding, partnership building, budget planning etc.) during the project enhancing the impact of SNGOs (C1,C2);- Create a web-platform hosting an interactive online step-by-step web tool to guide target group users in learn financial basics to make a fund-raise plan, where they can train/consult FAQ/orienteer better. Learning qualification will be issued through Open Badge System.- Define/develop a self-assessment tool for digitisation of SNGOs in order to define areas of work and training patterns within organisations.The project main aim is to empower at local level SNGOs and to improve the project management, implementation and delivery of them in order to keep them alive within the European democratic system.

"Through an innovative approach to social entrepreneurship, the project addresses two of Europe's main challenges: - youth employment; - social inclusion. In the EU-28 in 2018, there was an average of 3.4 million unemployed aged 15-24 and 22.4 million people in this age group in the labor market, according to the EU Labor Force Survey. This gives a youth unemployment rate of 15.2%. If we estimate the singular statistics of each of the member countries of the consortium of the YSEP project published in September 2019 on Statista, we find that the youth unemployment rate in Greece is 33%, Spain 32.2%, Italy 27.1% and France 19.2% ( https://www.statista.com/statistics/266228/youth-unemployment-rate-in-eu-countries/).In view of this situation, we are convinced that the social economy could be a way to go further and solve part of the problem of youth unemployment because it combines job creation and economic sustainability with a concern for equity, diversity and environmental goals. Indeed, we that, the fundamental principle to achieve social cohesion is the recognition of the true power of the youth community. This is why young people need to build on existing social entrepreneurship initiatives in Europe that have proven that existing resources in their local communities can be transformed into innovative social solutions to address challenges of young people's employment.The ""Youth Social Entrepreneurs Potential"" project aims to enable young people to develop their social entrepreneurship skills, critical thinking, civic and social skills and to acquire the skills needed to identify and value the resources of their local cultural and natural heritage in order to transform their business ideas into concrete actions while taking care of environmental sustainability and their compromise with the community.Project-specific objectives: 1. Promote a common understanding of the field of social entrepreneurship by exploring different concepts, formats, and models of social entrepreneurship (social enterprises, cooperatives, social economy vs solidarity economy, etc.).2. Facilitate the transfer of good practices and ideas from social enterprises, strengthen community spirit and increase the motivation of young people to participate in society by creating a set of existing local social entrepreneurship initiatives in each country.3. Helping young people with different situations learn how they can detect local needs and use their cultural and environmental heritage to launch a social initiative, by creating a European training methodology for Youth, modules, and training, learning materials and make them available in the form of open educational resources (OER). 4. Developing young people's entrepreneurial skills to identify resources and business opportunities within the local community and enhance cultural heritage, social and environmental skills, as well as the basic and cross-cutting skills, language and numerical skills.5. Share best practices and ideas on social economy initiatives in communities and create a best practice manual as a result of all project activities. The project's target groups are young people aged 18 to 29 who want to develop their business ideas while generating a positive ""return to society"". Needs were identified based on existing knowledge gained by some of the project partners from previous projects. Some of the challenges and obstacles identified are the lack of capacity to identify opportunities and resources within their local heritage, insufficient confidence in the transition to self-employment, lack of knowledge on how to balance for-profit objectives and ensure a positive impact on society (social, cultural, environmental, etc.), lack of support for social entrepreneurship in the region and lack and/or not up-to-date ICT skills. On the other hand, other young people may have knowledge of forms of self-employment, but do not have the information that it is possible to achieve economic growth while solving community problems. They need to develop their social and intercultural skills, critical thinking and responsibility to be active citizens in the communities where they live."