<< Background >>One of the main missions of the modern Higher Education systems is to provide students with key skills to manage their life and career plans in a complex and challenging society. The levels of early leaving and failures of students still remain very high and the rate of youth disengagement is one of the social and economic risks in Europe. The pandemic crisis provided evidence of how high this risk is and showed the vulnerability of our communities and the need of re-shaping our priorities by also enhancing the set of crucial skills for future generations. Learning from real life is one of the challenges for Higher Education systems and enhancing the active role of each university in promoting civic engagement of all students and of the academic community locally and internationally becomes a priority. Student disengagement represents a human, social, cultural and economic cost for individuals and the whole society. Many countries are carrying out tutoring and peer learning programmes in order to prevent early leaving from Higher Education. Also career guidance is a more and more powerful strategy for preventing students' dropout rates, while widening career opportunities in different social groups, promoting lifelong learning and supporting students during transitions.According to the European lifelong guidance strategy (2008), the main aim of career guidance is, in fact, to equip the individual with transversal competences to better manage and develop his or her potential in education, work and life. “Career Management Skills” (CMS) represent the key concept of this strategy. They refer to a set of personal, reflective, social and digital skills needed for making and implementing career decisions and transitions. Consequently, the challenge for universities is to promote and enhance the quality of teaching, for which it is necessary to implement innovative student-centred teaching methodologies. These methodologies require the commitment of students to their studies, which is not always present. Misperceptions and misunderstandings of duties and commitments often play a role in the student's lifetime and adversely affect the study plan. This set of problems during academic life puts students at risk for problems such as exclusion, loss of confidence, dropout and unemployment. Furthermore, early academic leaving affects the academic system and undermines the performance of the HE system moving energies and potentials into the labor market. In this scenario the model of Community Service Learning (CSL) will become a great innovation in didactics because it promotes learning in real situations, involving students in civic initiatives and social programmes aimed to benefit local or international communities. A structured programme of CSL (integrated within the learning offer of the HEIs) helps students master important curriculum content by supporting them in making meaningful connections between topics they are studying and their many applications. Furthermore, it combines the needs for improving career guidance and tutoring services with the need to improve the quality of teaching.Service-learning offers a unique opportunity for students to get involved with their communities in a tangible way, by integrating service projects with didactic and learning. Studies indicate that “students evaluating their service-learning courses are more likely than students evaluating other courses to report that the courses promoted interpersonal, community and academic engagement, were academically challenging, and encouraged their continued study at the University.” (Gallini & Moely, 2003). Furthermore, a correlation seems to exist between Community Service Learning and increased personal awareness, increased social awareness, and improved student learning outcomes that are all rooted in learning conditions that ultimately engage and retain students in post-secondary institutions (Prentice & Robinson, 2010).<< Objectives >>From Student to Active Citizen is a key element of renewed and expanding HEIs commitment to both civic engagement education and more inclusive academic policies. After the Pandemic crisis, the education for civic engagement and a responsive academic governance is founding objectives of a renewed European spirit. These goals remain essential for the future as the European higher education system continue to seek productive ways to engage their community in the whole society. This need is combined with the priority to looking forward the academic learning system to be more student centred, be careful to improve students’ wellbeing and to increase their academic engagement to prevent drop out or poor performance. All the universities involved in the ENHANCE Project are looking to find smart solutions to increase the students’ performance and the academic social commitment in order to be more engaged in the society, to give answer to the emerging needs of the labour market and to address the research for social scopes.The ENHANCE project aims at design and develop an innovative Community Service Learning approach with related learning tools and digital resources. A modern CSL system will enhance students' self-knowledge, empathy, communication skills and cultural awareness. Its practices allow students to acquire social skills and attitudes that are implemented in everyday life. Meta-analyses also show the effect of Service Learning on the development of diverse competencies. Most papers present Service Learning as a valid pedagogical strategy for acquiring knowledge, attitudes and promoting civic engagement. For the ENHANCE partnership the Community Service Learning is also a fundament set of practices to implement career guidance and academic tutoring, because it helps students retain more information learned in class, achieve higher course grades, and have greater satisfaction with the course; these are aspects that irreversible impact on the future citizen, workers, and researchers. The ENHANCE consortium aims at finding smart solutions in design an innovative CSL system, also based on the partners experience to guaranteeing remote continuity of the teaching–learning process during the pandemic crisis.Equally, for this project, ICT is a crucial ally for a sound implementation of community service-learning into the academic services since it increases ease of access and relevance during the student's dynamic construction of a new career, training and educational pathway. New technology is an area of transformative social change (e- learning, virtual mobility, social media, etc.). ICT goes beyond conventional education and introduces a feedback loop that enables stakeholders and diverse target groups to contribute to the design of the system. Community service-learning will be provided at any stage of academic career, with the support of the tutoring and career services and within all learning environments. This innovative approach also implies an increasing need for a new set of digital tools and resources for empowering the tutoring and career services. The project achievements also include the implementation of a cooperative strategy for introducing and integrating Service-Learning in the tutoring and career service of the universities involved in the project. CSL will also improve the academic system of micro-credentials, related to several learning pathways. A micro-credential is a recognised proof of the learning outcomes that a learner has achieved following a short learning experience, according to transparent standards and requirements and upon assessment. Micro-credentials are owned by the learner, are shareable, portable and may be combined into larger credentials or qualifications. Through micro-credentials the new CSL system will be easily integrated in the formal learning offer of each HEIs.<< Implementation >>The main activities of the ENHANCE project includes: 1 - Participatory Action Research (PAR) - The consortium will collect best references, models and practices on Community Service Learning (CSL) through an international desk research and local and national focus groups with tutors, education staff and other associated stakeholders. PAR is a pedagogical approach based on the direct and active involvement of stakeholders and beneficiaries in the co-creation of the new CSL system, based on the related project outputs (IO1-IO2-IO3). The working groups will include tutors, career guidance practitioners, coordinators, trainers, students, experts and researchers. All participants play an active role as “researchers” and cooperate for building a new contextualised knowledge, developing innovative actions for solving common issues and for designing the new CSL model and to collect practices and models for implementing all tools and resources.The PAR will be the methodological base to design and to test all IOs (IO1 - IO3) through regional pilot actions with a wide and direct involvement of tutors and students in 5 Countries.2 - The European framework of Career Management Skills (CMS) will be the based to design the Virtual CSL platform, to build the learning offer and to define the micro-credential related to each pathways (in real situations or within virtual environments for e-learning). Each students involved in Community Service Learning will collect and upload learning evidences to gain micro-credential related to the CMS and other key skills. 3 - Pilot Actions: all regional teams in Spain, Italy, Romania, Greece and Turkey will set up the CSL system and test the model within the HEIs involved and through civic programmes and social initiatives in cooperation with the associated partners. The main achievements will be the validation of the products (IO1-IO2-IO3) and the implementation of the learning and tutoring resources.4 - International Training - In Spain a group of selected tutors from 5 countries will trained to use the CSL model and the related digital tools. Trained tutors will be appointed as ENHANCE Ambassador to lead dissemination and further exploitation activities and initiatives nationally and internationally. The training module for CSL Tutors (IO3) will be created and shared as MOOC by all HEIs involved in the project.The work plan shared and implemented by all partners will produce 3 relevant outputs (IO1 - IO3) designed and related as a coherent set of models and resources to providing tailored and effective CSL programmes for students' engagement and career education.<< Results >>Main project results will be:- Creation of a common international approach on Community Service Learning - CSL (IO1), as learning resource for enhancing the academic training offer and the tutorship services. It will be produced a comprehensive Handbook for tutors and educative staff, based on the best practices and learning resources. The main focus will be on the Career Management Skills framework, following the EU Resolutions, to support all students in the building of a lifelong career and learnig plan. This theoretical and methodological document will be used by all partners and associated partners to enhance and enlarge learning opportunites in real life and civic engagement for all students. It will be also a base model all HEIs in Europe for improving education policiesand build inclusive systems to validate informal learning through a micro-credential system. 2 - Development of an innovative web portal for supporting Virtual Commyunity Service Learning (IO2). This tool will have a potentially strong impact as it allows HEIs to provide community service learning on line and e-tutoring support to students and organisations involved. The platform will be multi-languages to foster an international use and widest exploitation.3 - E-learning platform and training module for CSL tutors and education staff of HEIs (IO3). This resource will be designed as MOOD to be used freely by all Universities and other HEIs for training and updating tutors, trainers and career practicioners.

There is a significant lack of women in STEM. Globally, women are under-represented in STEM fields due to deep-rooted gender differences and career expectations, rather than a reflection of ability (OECD, 2017). In the UK, women make up just 14.4% of the STEM workforce (Wise Campaign, 2015). Women Europe-wide are less motivated to study STEM subjects from a young age, due to perceived inequality in the fields (Microsoft, n.d.). Interlinking socio-cultural and economic factors impinge on the quality of girls’ education which impacts their decisions regarding future study and careers in STEM (UNESCO, 2017). This results in low levels of female interest and participation in STEM, and high drop-out rates for those that do choose to pursue STEM education (UNESCO, 2015).The large numbers of women who ‘leak’ out of the STEM pipeline as their career progresses has been labelled the ‘Leaky Pipeline’. This leaky pipeline has been the result of the challenges that women face in the Recruitment, Retention and Progression of their careers (RRP framework- WISE Campaign and EQUALITEC project 2001). This has significant economic and social implications for women having to start a new career (Women’s Engineering Society, 2014) and negatively impacts the EU economy, affecting levels of unemployment and GDP (gross domestic product) (European Institute for Gender Equality, n.d.).There is a strong case for diversity in STEM, as it enables organisations to maximise individual opportunity (CaSE, 2014) and benefit from diverse workforces that increase levels of productivity and creativity (WISE, 2014). Furthermore, employing organisations wishing to attract top talent must diversify and adapt to candidates’ needs, as competition for top candidates increases (Forbes, 2011). This project will address gender disparities in STEM, with a focus on those facing a double disadvantage. The lack of diversity in STEM affects all minority groups. Disabled STEM students are 57% less likely to pursue further study than non-disabled students (CaSE, 2014). There are strong links between low socio-economic status and low participation in STEM (Royal Society, 2008). Just 0.5% of board members in engineering in the UK are black (Women in STEM, 2019).Women in STEM need support at all stages of their career (Amazon HR strategy 2019) but mainly they need support in building their confidence and soft skills to navigate in a male dominated environment. (https://www.personneltoday.com/hr/amazon-unveils-strategy-to-increase-women-in-stem-roles/) The FemSTEM Coaching project aims to bridge the soft skills gender gap in STEM, by providing women with tools and techniques to develop their confidence and soft skills through a combination of online training and peer-support Coaching Circles™, that are framed around the RRP framework.The project objectives are to:-Use the RRP framework to create a comprehensive approach to deliver interventions to address the challenges faced by women during the RRP stages-Develop an E-Coaching programme for women in STEM-Develop a face-to-face peer coaching programme for women in STEM-Increase women’s self-confidence, self-efficacy and develop their soft skills and employability skillsTo achieve this, there will be three intellectual outputs carried out as part of the project:-IO1 – RRP Framework testingCrucial to this programme will be the incorporation of the RRP framework, to ensure that it addresses the needs of women at all stages of their careers in STEM and adapts the coaching models which will be provided.-IO2 – FemSTEM E-Coaching ProgrammeFemSTEM Coaching aims to tackle the issues facing women in STEM through the creation of a comprehensive E-Coaching Programme, consisting of five modules that will address the most important soft skills for women in STEM -IO3 – Coaching Circles™The Coaching Circles™ will allow for a more in-depth exploration of the soft-skills development via peer-support to improve self-efficacy. The target group is all women in STEM, however the project will particularly focus on providing support for those facing a double disadvantage, including BAME individuals, those from lower socio-economic backgrounds, older workers, people with disabilities, etc.The platform will enable women to fit what they have learnt into the context of STEM industries, by providing them with positive role models and encouraging them to take the next steps towards their future career in STEM.This project will serve as a tool for women in STEM to use for career development long after the end of the project. The project’s website and platform will exist as a long-standing resource for soft-skill development at all stages throughout women’s careers. The Career Circles™ facilitator’s guide will enable coaches and trainers to facilitate the Circles™ in the future, as this will provide a comprehensive explanation of the methodology and how to deliver them.

Background of the EQuiPPE project:Physical Education (P.E.) is recognised as the most effective means of providing children with the skills, attitudes, values, knowledge and understanding that are essential to participation in society. It is critical to the development of physical literacy and civic engagement, academic achievement and good physical and mental health (UNESCO, 2015). Despite the UNESCO Charter for Physical Education and Sport, Article 4’s recommendation that personnel professionally responsible for physical education and sport should be appropriately qualified, a high proportion of primary P.E. in Europe is taught by generalist rather than specialist P.E. teachers (Onofre et al., 2012). There was a clear need to support generalist teachers to develop their professional skills and practices in order to improve the quality of P.E. which the EQuiPPE project sought to address. It was recognised that: • Primary-level schools experience a number of challenges in providing high quality P.E. including finance and appropriate training for staff; • Many primary teachers are predominantly generalists rather than specialists and not trained specifically in the delivery of P.E. Aim:The overall aim of the EQuiPPE project was to develop an online set of materials that supported Continuing Professional Development (CPD) for primary P.E. teachers across the EU. In the present context, CPD is a continuous process through which teachers are able to improve skills, knowledge and experience to help them learn, reflect and review their practices. The EQuiPPE project has provided knowledge, information and materials to create a set of resources to increase teachers’ confidence and improve practice in this area. Via input from the partners, teachers, and wider networks of relevant policy makers and professionals, the project developed resources that reflected the needs and preferences of primary teachers responsible for devising and delivering P.E. Objectives:1. To identify examples of good practice from each partner country concerning the use of CPD and teacher education with respect to the provision of primary P.E;2. To liaise with academics, national and European teacher education networks to identify and develop a competency framework for high quality P.E;3. To collaborate with local school networks to ensure appropriateness and acceptability of the package;4. To engage in dissemination and exploitation activities that promote the practical utility of the CPD package;5. To develop the following intellectual outputs:- Intellectual Output 1 (O1): Needs analysis report;- Intellectual Output 2 (O2): EQuiPPE online materials;- Intellectual Output 3 (O3): EQuiPPE online portal;- Intellectual Output 4 (O4): EQuiPPE pilot evaluation report;- Intellectual Output 5 (O5): EQuiPPE multimedia content. Main activities:The project was arranged into six main activities including Project Management and Implementation (PMI), and the five intellectual outputs described above. Methodology:A mixed methodology was deployed to develop the intellectual outputs. This approach combined different types of evidence to provide a more complete response to the need to enhance quality in primary P.E. This involved the use of quantitative and qualitative data to inform the development of the final EQuiPPE resources via the activities undertaken in each of the intellectual outputs.Number and profile of participants:The EQuiPPE project consisted of five partners from Northern (UK), Eastern (Czech Republic, Romania), and Southern (Greece) Europe. These partners included four Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) and an In-Service Teacher Training Centre (Poland). Results and impact: In the short to medium term (0 to 2 years) the following results are anticipated: • enhanced quality of primary P.E. in the partner countries and across the EU; • improved teacher confidence and skills; • increased knowledge and understanding of the importance of physical literacy to a child’s development. Longer term, the impacts of the project activities are expected to accrue benefits for a wide audience including: • better prepared and educated primary P.E. teachers; • improved physical literacy, confidence, physical and mental health, and educational attainment for primary school aged children; • greater access to high quality CPD resources via a freely available online CPD package for primary P.E. teachers; • Improved policy, research and practice through the development of information and evidence concerning the current situation and challenges in primary P.E.

"In response to the effects of the economic crisis, curtailed public budgets and the magnitude of future challenges, social entrepreneurship and corporate social responsibility (CSR) emerge as a key policy priority in the EU. They are sources of social innovation and a contributing factor to building up the innovation capacity and competitiveness of EU economies. This turns them into increasingly critical elements of the EU development strategy. Yet business and economics education and training does not adequately reflect this trend.The interdisciplinary academic field of social entrepreneurship has not been well developed in the EU. The term itself is often understood poorly or narrowly. The study of CSR is limited in terms of academic hours and content. The project was built on the rationale that for business to be motivated and able to achieve a social impact, the very content of CSR and Social Entrepreneurship as subjects in education would need to develop and business education needs to grow more responsive to what have until now largely been public agendas for dealing with the pressing challenges facing society. BEST project has had the overall objective to promote cooperation and exchange of good practices among relevant organizations from 7 Program countries (Bulgaria, Greece, Lithuania, Portugal, Spain, Turkey, UK), in view of enhancing the quality and relevance of education in the field of social entrepreneurship and CSR, fostering social innovation and supporting the social impact and responsibility of business.The specific objectives of the project were:- to support research and best practices exchange in the field of social entrepreneurship, social innovation and corporate responsibility, in view of making business/economics education more relevant to sustainable regional and local development;- to initiate cross fertilization between business/economics studies and sustainable development studies in order to develop an innovative curriculum that fully integrates the subjects of social entrepreneurship and CSR into business/economics and entrepreneurship education;- to develop a model certification procedure allowing business to evaluate and certify the skills of volunteers that contribute to CSR initiatives;- to maximize the impact of the integrated innovative curriculum by demonstration initiatives, training of trainers and the development of a pilot e-learning platform for training in CSR and Social Entrepreneurship;- to contribute to the promotion of social entrepreneurship and corporate responsibility among business, society, media and education providers.This project was a partner initiative involving 7 Higher Education Institutions, a NGO and 2 institutions providing non-formal education and professional training. The activities of the project included development of intellectual outputs, transnational project meetings, sustainability activities, dissemination activities, a joint training of staff, and evaluation activities. The main project outputs and results were: - Research report ""Involvement of business in promoting sustainable development at the regional and local levels in Bulgaria, Greece, Lithuania, Spain, Portugal, Turkey and the UK"";- Compendium of good practices for corporate responsibility, social entrepreneurship, and social innovation;- “Millennial Business Europe: Entrepreneurship for Sustainability” good practices electronic database - Course syllabuses for Corporate Social Responsibility, Social Entrepreneurship and Sustainable Development;- Training/teaching materials for courses on Corporate Social Responsibility, Social Entrepreneurship and Sustainable Development;- E-learning platform with online courses for training in Corporate Social Responsibility and Social Entrepreneurship;- Model procedures for recognition of skills and competences acquired through internships and volunteering in CSR and SE initiatives;- A Centre for Social Innovation and Entrepreneurship;- 7 national-level conferences “Business Education for Sustainability” in the 7 project countries;- Blueprint label for business education “Business Education for Sustainability” (BEST);.The project’s longer-term impact has been:- to create public awareness of both the support needs and the potential of social business;- to create an “image” of social entrepreneurship and social business as a pragmatic and solutions-oriented approach that is nevertheless oriented towards social action and change;- to contribute to improving the visibility and credibility of social entrepreneurship and corporate responsibility, and to foster a more adequate understanding of this business field, including through research, sharing of good practices, and credibility enhancing labelling;- to underscore and enable the importance of incorporating “social” business studies into mainstream education, in view of both building skills and changing the mindset of the future business leaders."

"The growing education-related migration has led to many countries consider international students migration as the most important part of foreign policy aimed at strengthening of economic and political influence in the world. According to UNESCO: in 2016 total number of students enrolled in participating post-secondary institutions increased by 65%, and number of international students in the world – by 80% since 2010. According to OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) the most popular countries for studying abroad in 2015 was USA, UK, Australia, Germany, France, Canada, Russia and Spain. According to EUROSTAT there were at least 1.6 million degree mobile students from abroad who studied at tertiary education level across the European Union (EU) in 2016. These are internationally mobile students enrolled in a degree programme in a country other than the one where they completed their upper secondary education. More than two fifths (43%) of the students from abroad studying at tertiary education level in the EU in 2016 were from Europe,30% were from Asia and 12% were from Africa. In numbers: Czech Republic–42716 foreign stud.,German–149285,Finland–19133,Portugal–19 830. This stats shows that only one of the consortium countries is on the top list of receivers. For sure there are lots of reasons of this situation, however consortium believes that common framework - how to work with foreigners and how university environment should be prepared for the newcomers as well as exchange of good practices will help to make environment more prepared for internationalization. The most students making decision about country of studying relying to stay and find the work there., according to worldwide statistic 25% of students from abroad settle in the country of studying. It was confirmed by Leader internal survey the most students making decision about country of studying relying to stay and improve their employment prospects and find the work there. On the 2nd place students put opportunity for personal development, the 3rd place location, climate ect. According to students experience next problems of study abroad is connected with following aspects:• Culture shock, reluctance of integration with national students and new culture• Problems with communication (language barrier)• Style of communication, working rules, internal code of organisation• Organization of daily life in new environmentPsychologist (working at Leader University) who delivered psychological support for students and staff within The Psychological Center for Diagnosis and Therapy said that incoming students are experiencing higher levels of stress because their relocation to another country. And they have to face up with different problems than national students. Students combine this problem with lack or inadequate support from university staff on the other hand university staff is glad of the level of consider the support offered to students to be sufficient and satisfactory. Meeting the expectations of students but also of the academic staff by delivering tailor made employee work, Leader partner decided to build the consortium towards better recognition of needs and problems of international students and develop materials and supporting guides as well as exchange best practices. MAIN AIM of the project: to build strong cooperation network and develop sustainable model of support for international students and useful tool in order to help them to adapt to the new environment in order to strengthen internationalization of the universities from less attractive countries based on rich experience of more attractive counties. Stimulating creativity and raising the competence and skills of academic staff, students and graduates.Specific aims of the project: (1) development of Model of support for international student's adaptation based on interactions with target groups as well as on best practices recognized in consortium countries, (2) development of Guide book of ""Dos and don'ts"" for university staff working with foreign students and (3) development of Welcome guide for foreign students (4) and Interactive materials: Graphics and functionality of the interactive materials (edugraphics) for students and staff (5) Tailoring service to the needs of foreign students and expanding the skills of the academic staff (6) Creating a system supporting the participation of university employees in the internationalization process of the university (7) stimulating creativity and raising the competence and skills of academic staff, students and graduates.Target group:- International students- Domestic students- Mobility programmes coordinators- Internal HEI staff members working with foreignersThe basic concept of the project is to deal with problems which are facing by the international student and help them to interact by make a friendly learning atmosphere and understanding the cross-cultural dimensions for surviving abroad"