<< Objectives >>The partnership wants to reduce the digital gap with the explicit intention of breaking the wall to digital entrepreneurship. Today the digital market offers a very wide amount of possibilities for everybody. What not many years ago was expensive and extremely technical to develop (websites, stores, onlines services, etc.), today is very cheap and counts with many open-source tools to help achieving it. We want to put those resources in the hands of those who most need them and can benefit more.<< Implementation >>We are going to implement activities going from analysis, research and evaluation, to dissemination, and training. The project will focus on training, developing one on-site training that will act as means to an online training course that will be free open and accesible to everyone. But we do not want to create another purely theoretical course that has no real-life applications. We will design a eminently practical online training that will addionally count with an APP for better accesibility.<< Results >>We expect the project:-To improve basic digital skills in order to leave the digital gap behind.-To improve skills in digital entrepreneurship and stimulate new initiatives for all, especially for the integration and inclusion of adult people with fewer opportunities.-To increase abilities to innovate and implement entrepreneurship by applying the tools and methodologies provided.-To increase the level of awareness about importance of digital entrepreneurship.

<< Background >>The decision to apply for the project has come after many years of our experience with preparing students for their Erasmus+ exchange and also as a response to the current pandemic situation which has influenced all areas of the student life including study stays abroad. We have realized the pressing need to pay attention to students’ mental health since this field has been long overlooked despite its enormous impact on the motivation of students to participate in the Erasmus+ program, the positivity of their stay and also their integration back to their home environment after their return. Staying abroad can be mentally very demanding. For most of the students, it is the first time they’re leaving their friends, family and their comfort zone. During their mobility, they come to contact with new culture, new activities and a new need to communicate in a foreign language. Preparing for these kinds of situations comes with a lot of stress which the students experience before their departure. During the study stay itself, they can experience loneliness, exclusion, or the state of culture shock. After their return they may feel reverse culture shock. Nonetheless, current preparations for the mobility seem to be oriented mainly towards administration or multiculturality while ignoring these important aspects of studying abroad that the students need to be ready for. As the students are not offered sufficient preparation and support before their departure, many of them become discouraged and decide not to go. This applies especially to those students who suffer from mental problems or insufficient support from their close environment. They may be also dissuaded from participation based on the negative experiences of the past outgoing students who already returned from their mobility and who had had various problems or unpleasant feelings during their stay abroad. The consequence of this tendency is the consistently decreasing number of outgoing students. During the stay itself, students lack sufficient support from their home university. They often come across unforeseen problems and risks which they have to deal with on their own and in a foreign language. Many students do not expect having to deal with these issues just as they do not expect possible negative feelings connected to loneliness, being removed from the familiar environment or culture shock. This can manifest itself as some unpleasant feelings first but it can escalate to serious situations leading to anxiety, depression or even hospitalization. The unfortunate outcome of this is a negative experience from the mobility which they could not enjoy and get the most out of for their student, professional and personal life. We would like to address these issues with our project. Particularly, we see the need to increase inclusivity of the Erasmus+ program so that it is available to all students regardless their mental or physical health. In addition, we would like to motivate students to go study abroad and increase the number of students participating in the Erasmus+ program. Last but not least, we would like to ensure the most positive experience from their mobility and a smooth return back home.<< Objectives >>The main priority of our project is to increase inclusivity of the Erasmus+ program. Thanks to the preparatory pre-departure educational program, we will introduce outgoing students to the existence of possible problems and risks that can occur during their mobility and teach them how to deal with them. Consequent support provided using the online counselling service and the availability of all study materials from the educational program on the project’s webpage will ensure increased students’ sense of security. By using these project outputs, we want to reduce their fears and concerns that are frequently the main barrier hindering them from studying abroad. In particular, we would like to increase the motivation of those students who deal with various mental problems and who lack sufficient support that would help them go study abroad. The Mental Health program introduced in our project will provide this necessary support and make sure that the students’ mobility is as positive and as beneficial as possible. By providing the preparatory educational program before the departure, the support during the mobility and after the return, we wish to motivate students to participate in the Erasmus+ program and reassure them that the university will do its best to make their mobility enjoyable and profitable. The number of outgoing students is consistently decreasing and we would like to achieve a turn in this trend. We feel it is of the utmost importance to continually make sure that the mobility experience is complex and positive. The online counselling service and the materials available online will further ensure ongoing support during the students’ exchange and guarantee that their experience will be as positive and as enriching as possible. We would like for the students to return from their stay abroad satisfied and with many valuable experiences for their student, professional and personal development. Thanks to the techniques, which they will learn in the educational program, they will be ready to deal with various possible risks. If the opposite is the case, they will be able to reach out for help from the university using the counselling service. Involving the students who have returned from their mobility into the community of mentors for the next generation of outgoing students will reduce the possibility of reverse culture shock and facilitate their return to the home environment. Apart from this, we would like to create multinational community of students who will be help each other and share information. Last but not least, we wish to use the project to raise awareness about the need to work with mental health and discuss possible psychological problems of outgoing students. We would also like to remove the stigma still associated with this topic. By sharing the project’s results, want to create a unified way of how to care for outgoing students at European universities.<< Implementation >>The primary activity of our project will be the creation of the educational program for outgoing students. The program will focus mainly on mental health of the outgoing students and aim to prepare them for potential risks and problems that may occur during their mobility. Thanks to this training, the students will be prepared to deal with such issues efficiently. Topics covered in the program’s workshops and educational materials will include stress management, pre-departure fears, mindfulness, culture shock, and how to recognize and fight depression or anxiety. The program will include a series of workshops, videos, and webinars that will prepare students for their mobility. In addition, there will be other supportive materials such as articles, tips and tricks from other students, student blogs etc. By participating in the program, students will learn how to avoid certain high-risk situations during their mobility and how to deal with them if they happen. Another activity implemented by the project will be providing constant support to outgoing students using an online counselling service and online materials from the educational program that will be available on the project’s website. The goal of this support will be to help students in problematic situations and ensure their feeling of safety during the mobility. The counselling service will be provided by trained university employees (teachers or members of the university’s international department) and student volunteers, who have participated in the Erasmus+ program and may thus provide useful advice to those students that are currently experiencing their mobility. Thanks to this constant support, students will know there is a supportive community behind them that can help them at the time of need and will do their best to ensure a most positive and effective mobility experience for them. Both of these activities will lead to a creation of the project’s website with the timeline of the educational program, online counselling service and other supportive materials available to all outgoing students in case of a crisis during their mobility. In addition to these outputs we will create a handbook for the universities’ international department employees with the description of the whole Mental health program (that is the educational program, website and online counselling service) so that they can easily learn to work with these tools. The handbook will include a manual how to implement the program using the preparatory activities for the outgoing students at their respective universities. There will also be a manual how to administer the project’s webpage so that the employees might update the posted information based on the current development of risks associated with the mobilities of their students. The last important activity will be an ongoing collection of feedback and data from the students participating in the program. Based on their feedback and the analysis of data we will constantly modify subsequent phases of the implementation of the educational program and the online materials available to the students on the project’s webpage.<< Results >>The educational program provided to outgoing students before their departure for mobility will be the main result of the project. The program will be led by the professionals from the partner organization OUSHI, which is an institute under the St Cyril and Methodius Faculty of Theology of the Palacký University Olomouc . These specialists in the area of mental health and psychology will not only design the program but also implement it at other interested European universities. The program will consist of a series of workshops that will be first held by the professionals from OUSHI. In the next phase of the project, this task and associated knowledge will be transferred to the employees of the international departments of individual universities who will become new workshopers for the outgoing students. This will ensure the sustainability of the program even after the project is finished and also the possibility to apply it at any European university. Workshops held in person will be targeted at the first group of outgoing students and will be mainly part of the project’s testing phase. Based on the feedback of these participants we will create online webinars and videos that will be available to all outgoing students from the project’s webpage. Apart from the videos and webinars that are part of the educational program, the webpage will also contain information about the destination, contact information of other outgoing students and, most importantly, online counselling service. This counselling will be provided by trained employees of the universities’ international departments and also students who have participated in the Erasmus+ Program and thus can give advice to their fellow outgoing students in need. The online counselling service is one of the central results of the Mental Health program and will be created under the responsibility of Vilnius Tech. The two previous project results are closely associated with the following, which is the program’s webpage. It is yet another important output of the project because its goal is to connect the educational progam and online counselling service while making the Mental Health program attractive and user-friendly via gamification features. Academia Maribor, which has great experience with marketing and digitalization, wil be in charge of this output. The project’s webpage will include the timeline of the educational program, all educational materials and the online counselling service for outgoing students. The last project result is the program’s handbook for the employees of the universities’ international departments. It will be a booklet containing information about all the above-mentioned outputs together with the information on how to employ them at any European university. The goal of the handbook is to serve as a manual for the international departments’ employees when and where to implement the educational program, how to approach the online counselling service, how to train employees and students so that they are able to provide advice and support to outgoing students in need and how to use the materials which will be freely availabe on the project’s webpage.

In 2010 European Commission proposed a 10 – year strategy which was triggered by the economic and social crisis that Europe fell into those years. The Europe 2020 Strategy has been the EU's agenda for growth and jobs over the decade. It emphasises smart, sustainable and inclusive growth in order to improve Europe's competitiveness and productivity and support a sustainable social market economy. In 2011, the term Industry 4.0 was coined as part of the growth through digital transformation strategy of EU, conducting roadmaps to promote the digitalization of manufacturing. Industry 4.0 is a comprehensive concept as well as a new trend in manufacturing (and relevant sectors) based on the integration of a set of technologies that enable ecosystems of intelligent, autonomous as well as decentralized factories and integrated product-services (C. Santos, 2017).The Industry 4.0 trend is altering the production capabilities of all industries, including the agricultural sector. It is built on an array of digital technologies: Internet of Things, Big Data, Artificial Intelligence, and of digital practices: cooperation, mobility, open innovation. It concerns a transformation of the production infrastructures such as “connected” farms, new production equipment and “connected” equipment. The result is to enable both an increased productivity and quality and environmental protection. But they also generate modifications in the value chain and business models with more emphasis on knowledge gathering, analysis and exchange. Precision Agriculture is the core methodology engaged with the definition of digitalization of agriculture. The most essential challenge in the adoption of Precision Agriculture Methodology is the ability of farmers to invest and upgrade their practices of production. The workforce in agriculture is ageing, with over 56%over 55 in Europe (Euractiv, 2016). The digital skills of the workforce are thus limited and require additional investment in training to adopt technologies. Taking all the above mentioned into consideration, the consortium members decided that the current project will contribute to the development of an E-learning Platform as a digital tool to meet agricultural stakeholder’s needs on their education and training, with regard to the incorporation of precision agriculture applications in their farms. The purpose of the project is a transnational cooperation among these 5 partners with the same needs; to help farmers and other agricultural stakeholders to reassess their agricultural needs using Precision Agriculture as a tool of development aligned with the international trends of the sector. The current project addresses mainly to target groups as follows:1.Farmers2.Technical staff in rural production3.Agricultural consultants / Agriculturalists4.VET Trainers specialized in rural developmentThe project’s objectives focuses on:1.The stimulation of farmers and technical staff working in rural production to cope with the most up-to-date techniques and methodologies concerning the digital farming and more particularly the precision agriculture. 2.The development of the curriculum (knowledge and skills) of the trainers and the consultants of the agricultural sector on precision agriculture applications3.The introduction of innovative methodologies and applications to farmers according to the modern technological progress and the reform of institutional guidelines in European policies and international suggestions4.The implementation of a digital E-learning Platform on Precision Agriculture which will be a useful tool for the VET trainers on educating and teaching, incorporating the project outcomes in their sessions. The e-Learning platform and the accompanied handbook will be elaborated to work as means of exploiting by the VET trainers providing them a new teaching methodology during their training process. During the project implementation, the VET trainers of every partner will be trained on how they will teach farmers and other agricultural stakeholders using the Precision Agriculture Handbook for Beginners (IO1) and the Precision Agriculture VET Curriculum (IO2). The content of the Beginners’ Handbook and the Curriculum will be the educational material on precision agriculture which partners will develop. Then, they will incorporate it in the E-learning platform (IO3) and the VET trainers will exploit it to train farmers and relevant stakeholders. On the project's completion, VET trainers of every partner will have obtained the knowledge and the skills along with relevant competences to train the members of the above mentioned targets groups effectively on the importance of precision agriculture application in succeeding a more qualified workforce for a more sustainable agriculture.

European rural areas can be characterised by gender-selective migration since the number of women leaving rural areas exceeds the number of men doing so. Globally, women remain less likely to participate in the labour market than men, are more likely to be unemployed than men, and are over-represented in informal and vulnerable employment. Women in rural areas of the EU make up below 50% of the total rural population, they represent 45% of the economically active population, and about 40% of them work on family farms. The unemployment rate in rural areas began to decline during the analysed period (2013-2017); women have been more affected by unemployment than men (7.1% vs. 7.6% respectively). The biggest rate of women’s unemployment is registered in rural regions of Greece. (IPOL_STU (2019)608868). Although women in rural areas of the EU make up just below 50% of the total rural population, they represent 45% of the economically active population, and about 40% of them work on their family farms. Moreover, their importance in rural economy is probably even bigger, since their participation through the informal rural economy is not statistically recognised. Female entrepreneurs represent only one third of self-employed people in the EU and women farmers represent 30% of the total number of EU farm managers. They tend to have smaller farms than men, but take more calculated risks than men. Women’s ideas for innovation are as marketable as men’s, but they are not recognised by predominantly male stakeholders (COPA, 2017). All the above mentioned led the DigiWomen partnership to approach women coming from disadvantageous rural areas as end beneficiaries through the provision on modern and innovative methodologies and tools to effectively educate themselves. The VET trainers responsible for implementing training courses for these women will guide and support them creating tailored to their needs. Through training and skills development, rural girls and women can play a much greater role in the development of green food and agricultural value chains, both as current and future agricultural workers and entrepreneurs. (IPOL_STU (2019)608868). The purpose of the DigiWomen project is a transnational cooperation among 5 partners with the same needs and characteristics; to educate VET trainers to support women coming from disadvantageous rural areas to train themselves in a more business education and training focusing on developing job qualifications, leadership skills and bookkeeping. To achieve it the DigiWomen project comes to enhance their skills on financial, digital, agricultural and English language literacy. To this end, women will receive equal opportunities through the use of modern and innovative digital training tools; an E-learning Platform which will include particular curriculum for VET trainers and support them to create attractive and friendly modules. Thus, the consortium members decided to approach particular target groups which are dominant in their area of intervention. The project addresses mainly to target groups as follows:•Women with low job qualifications coming from rural areas trying to incorporate in labour market or create their own business•VET trainers/ coaches/ mentors as relevant professional categories of staff which are involved with women to their integration in the communities. The objectives of the project are as follows:•The provision to VET trainers of digital tools which will help them to organize better their training courses and enhance their skills on training approach to women coming from rural areas.•The development of basic skills in financial, digital, agricultural and English language literacy provides women with basic knowledge and skills so as to look for better working conditions•The development of a curriculum (knowledge – skills - competences) for the VET trainers on a collection of literacies’ qualifications suitable for supporting women to enter in the labour market•The stimulation of women to educate themselves on the proposed literacies by the project so as to look for better working conditions or think of creating their own business. •The raise of awareness of “woman entrepreneurship” in rural areas.The expected results of DigiWomen project are located on the job qualifications that participants would acquaint after the project completion. VET trainers and women coming from disadvantageous rural areas will be the significant beneficiaries of the project as they will be trained in multiple subjects and will gain, except for the knowledge, personal development qualifications as confidence and self-esteem. The fulfillment of the project’s objectives on upskilling for better working conditions or dealing with entrepreneurship after the implementation of project actions.

<< Objectives >>The aim of the project is to improve the qualifications of the students for electric bicycles in vocational education, to bring the educational content closer to the development of electric vehicles and to train the intermediate staff needed in this field. For this purpose, it is desired to produce materials that vocational education teachers can use about electric bicycles, to increase the level of cooperation of vocational education institutions and to contribute to the green transition.<< Implementation >>A training module covering all processes of electric bicycles, a guide that vocational education teachers can use in the field of electric bicycles, and student/teacher course contents will be created. An e-Learning platform will be produced, where electric bicycles are included as video lessons and detailed parts/equipment presentations will be made. Various target groups will be reached through dissemination activities.<< Results >>Electric bicycle curriculum deficiencies and the need for intermediate staff will be eliminated, educational materials and resources will be produced in the field of electric bicycles, trainer/teacher qualifications and equipment will be increased. The cooperation network of institutions will be expanded, and important awareness will be provided about the priorities in the project. Educational content in the field of electric bicycles will be digitalized and new studies will begin.