The main objective of the project is to collaboratively address a common innovation support challenge, through the concept of the Twinning+ methodology. Design Impact Observatory (DesImO) aims to bring four organisations together, to jointly explore best practices and provide guidelines and tools regarding effectively measuring Design and its impact on SMEs. During the implementation of the project, the partners will peer review past and on-going initiatives focusing on measuring impact of Design interventions in the business sector (and especially in SMEs). The good practices will be identified and further researched on how they were set up, what data collection methodologies they applied, what were the advantages and limitations of those methods. Using the Twinning Advanced methodology, this initiative will lead to the elaboration of a Design Options Paper (DOP), which will include the results of the peer-review process and of the pilot testing, and will also act as a backbone of how to set up a ‘Design Impact Observatory’. This will help other innovation agencies to monitor the level of integrating Design – or any other driver of innovation – into business and its impact on SMEs.

“Design and Creativity Development Toolkit” project will be carried out within the framework of a strategic partnership of three EU countries - Latvia, Estonia and Denmark. The main purpose of the collaboration is to strengthen the significance of creative and design thinking among adolescents.The idea and necessity for the project is rooted in recent findings about increasingly growing numbers of young people who are not employed, not currently learning or training. The term is known as NEET youth and makes up to 12,6 % of the EU population. According to research, most often this status is not chosen voluntarily. Adolescents are affected by various risk factors, including migration, financial insecurity, social and territorial exclusion, family factors and many more.When pre-interviewing teachers and educators, results showed that currently there is no specific toolkit or set of methods adapted for the age of adolescents in Latvia, which would allow them to act proactively. Adolescents lose motivation, their self-esteem decreases, and the risk of mental health problems and deviant behavior grows. While unemployment rates among young people rise, latest discoveries prize creativity as a key competency for leaders (IBM 2010 Global CEO Study), providing definitions, components and tools how to enhance the quality of life satisfaction, work with our mindset etc. Current project focuses on the development of design thinking, emphasizing spatial, visual thinking as something relatively easy for teenagers to be perceived, as well as easy to use and interpret from a methodological point of view. “Perspective NEET group” i.e. those adolescents who are most likely to be exposed to a set of preventive and proactive activities, including the use of creative and design thinking tools were chosen as the main target group.The “Design and Creative Thinking Development Toolkit” will be created as a preventive tool for adolescents in the last grades of primary school (13-15 years of age), in order to contribute to minimizing the number of NEET youth.Project goals are:To promote the development of creative thinking in the adolescent age group by using age-appropriate design thinking development tools.To promote the interest and awareness of non-formal education teachers and other specialists in the field about the specifics and significance of creative thinking by providing methodological material for further independent work with adolescents.To promote the exchange of experience and opinions between the strategic partners of the project, ensuring learning mobility activities during the project implementation.To reduce the stigma about the incompetence and competitiveness of the creative professions in the labor market by emphasizing the multidimensionality and value of creativity in the examples of the world's leading companies.Promote a set of preventive actions to reduce the quantitative and qualitative numbers of the NEET group. Project tasks are:Carry out a meta-analytical study on currently available design and creativity development tools and their characteristics in the general age group. Results of the study will help to identify and analyze the experiences in all three Member States and to identify key areas for action with the chosen adolescent target group.To organize working groups among strategic partners in order to implement the process of exchange of experience of the project member states and to develop common tasks for the creation of creativity development tools for the target audience of teenagers.To create design and creative thinking development methods (games, tasks, etc.), adapting them to the specific stage of adolescent age group.To create design and creative thinking development tools for teenagers. Make it freely available to anyone interested in the form of a website.To develop methodological material for non-formal education teachers in Latvian, Estonian, Danish and English.To ensure the sustainability of the project by implementing cross institutional cooperation between project implementers, media, local governments, educational institutions and responsible ministries.Advise stakeholders to conduct in-depth research, including longitudinal studies, to determine the role of design and creative thinking in adolescents 'developmental stages and their potential impact on adolescents' self-esteem and overall well-being.Intellectual outcomes of the project:Meta-analytical research in each partner country;Design and creative thinking development (DCTC) toolkit;Methodology for implementation of the DCTC toolkit; Web - page as a mean of communication for project results and further activities.

The project builds on the Preparatory Action (PA)‘Expert Network on Recognition of outcomes of learning periods abroad in general secondary education’ (2020-2021) involving a cross-sectoral partnership from Belgium(Flanders), Estonia and Poland, where teachers are responsible for recognition.Its objectives are:1)Promote cooperation between all stakeholders of individual pupil mobility (IPM) for the goal of automatic recognition2)Empower teachers for assessing competences - especially transversal ones- developed by pupils in individual mobility programmes, based on the PA output ‘Training Model’3)Implement a systemic approach to recognition of learning periods abroad through the adoption of National frameworks on recognition, based on the PA output ‘Proposal for a European framework’4)Ensure and sustain policy change in the field of recognition of learning periods abroad through the creation of National and European Observatories on Pupil MobilityThese objectives meet the Erasmus+ priority specific to the school sector ‘Recognition of learning outcomes for participants in cross-border learning mobility’ and two horizonal priorities:‘Inclusion and diversity’ and ‘Common values, civic engagement and participation’.The project activities consist in the adaptation,piloting and assessment of the two above mentioned outputs, through Trainings for Teacher Trainers, national teacher trainings, and meetings with IPM stakeholders.The expected results are national training models and frameworks for recognition sustained by a European network of teacher trainers and European and national networks of IPM stakeholders.Wide dissemination is foreseen through the involvement of Teacher trainers from across Europe and a European conference.The project will benefit directly 45 teacher trainers, 200 teachers, 200 pupils,40 representatives of IPM stakeholders such as school heads, pupil exchange organisations, school student unions,Ministries of Education and Erasmus+ NA...

This specific project aims to bring three organizations together, to jointly seek solutions in the service delivery system of Design support programmes. The three members of the consortium have long-standing experience in providing services to SMEs, managing nation/regional funds to reinforce entrepreneurship. Also, on the one hand, the three organizations are positioned in totally different areas, south-eastern, central and northern Europe and their economies are at different phases, while on the other hand, they themselves as organization show a different level of service provision regarding design support. All those conditions, create an added-value consortium formation, as this diversity ensures that more different points of view will be captured in every subject examined, representing the concerns of the highest percentage possible of similar agencies across Europe. During the implementation of the project, the partners will peer review the procedures of setting up a design service that satisfies its target group, raising awareness of design support opportunities, the provision of the services themselves, the post-evaluation of the provision and the improvement of the service. In the end, the partners will have peer-reviewed existing services, come up with a backbone of how to set up a “design support service”, while at the end of the peer-review process, the partners will set up a pilot in Greece, where a newly-established service will be set, using and testing the draft DOP. After the set up of the service, the final amendment will be made in response to potential unforeseen issues not covered by the DOP, and its final version will be published.

Oral diseases and conditions are the 3rd most expensive diseases to treat in the EU. They affect about half of the EU population. As highlighted in the 2021 WHO Oral Health Resolution, there are major challenges in the financing of oral health care: in deviation from the UN and WHO goal of Universal Health Coverage, many EU citizens do not have access to essential oral health care without financial hardship. This causes detrimental impacts for the individual citizen, while increasing costs and wasting resources on the macro level. Research-policy gaps and research-practice gaps keep triggering inertia and inaction instead of addressing the persistent, albeit largely preventable, burden of oral diseases. To this end, the PRUDENT (Prioritization, incentives and Resource use for sUstainable DENTistry) project aims to develop and implement an innovative and context-adaptive framework for optimized financing of oral care. PRUDENT brings together top investigators from prestigious universities, public authorities and policymakers, civil society and patient organizations, health insurers, and health professionals, to achieve a step change in collective problem solving. Given the comprehensiveness of the topic, PRUDENT uses a targeted approach that is entirely focused on four major root-causes underlying the current limitations of oral care financing. Using a mixed-methods research approach, PRUDENT will: (i) co-develop oral health system performance indicators and implement them in EU-wide monitoring framework; (ii) conduct real-world and lab experiments to identify improved oral care financing mechanisms; (iii) leverage regulatory learning, needs-adaptive resource planning and deliberative priority setting to enhance the improvement of oral care financing. The knowledge gained will be merged into the PRUDENT Financing Companion with policy briefs and decision aid tools for concretely actionable and context-adaptive improvement of oral care financing.