FEM-Up GENERAL OBJECTIVE is supporting women’s innovation and economic empowerment both through work-based educational pathways and by providing women with real entrepreneurial support, facilitating the development of their entrepreneurial skills, and promoting gender equity via actions that push for the employment of women in innovative business areas and tackle unconscious biases regarding female entrepreneurship and leadership.

FEM-Up project aims to inspire and encourage young women (mainly between 18 and 30 years old) to overcome social and cultural barriers, showing their creative and innovative side in STEM disciplines and entrepreneurship, putting it into practice through their involvement in a training and contest pathway that will bring them to concretely develop their own innovative ideas. In the long run, the objective is to contribute to the increase of female entrepreneurship in Europe.

The activities to be implemented are related to the establishment in 6 countries of the FEM-Up Academy. It is based on an online/offline mentoring programme aimed at facilitating learning, networking and career progression, with a strong emphasis on gender dimension, providing a supportive environment that will act as an incubator for women entrepreneurs. At the end of the FEM-Up Academy, a contest will be launched, and the best innovative ideas will be proclaimed during an award ceremony.

These are the main project results:

1. Establishment of the FEM-Up Academy, training contents & e-platform (WP2), which includes the development of the Training Curriculum and the technical development of the e-platform with 2 e-modules on cultural bias and entrepreneurship.
2. Creation of the FEM-Up Academy (WP3), which also includes the development of a “Train the trainers” session and the “FEM-Up your idea” contest to award the best business idea that came up within the FEM-Up Academy.

This project will focus on learning from each other in the fight against climate change.

Due to the high demand, the project partners will prepare the application-oriented regional/national case studies for climate and environmental protection from the C4CC project (“Calendar for Climate Change Quid-Pro-Quo – Inter-generational Education to Ease Global Warming”, project number 2021-1-DE02-KA220-ADU-000035090) in an extended multi-media format. These can then be sustainably transferred in a cross-border European context and can be used or applied as is or in an adapted manner. Perpetual wall calendars and an interactive online climate map will be the entry points to an abundance of educational, inspirational and actionable materials that can be used in a multitude of contexts and by different stakeholders.

C4CC content can be accessed here: https://c4cc.eu/ and here: http://app.c4cc.eu/ (online calendar with resources). During project LTTAs, dissemination and pilots, it has become evident that the local resources are highly interesting and inspirational for other countries, too. However, as they only exist in the national language, they remain inaccessible in a cross-national context. There has also been some late feedback in the project that it would be great to have a calendar that can work year after year – a perpetual calendar that does not have year or weekday specifications.

In this project, project partners of the C4CC project, in combination with newcomer organisations, want to work together to do a perpetual calendar, translate national content to English and, if necessary (e.g., something has become outdated), update project content. The new EU map will be the gateway to the resources and connect to the current C4CC app.

GLOBE TROTTERS is a small-scale cooperation aiming at offering a new way to support women entrepreneurs interested in internationalisation and increase their ability to cooperate, compete and work at the international level.

During the 12-month-long cooperation, the partners will create and test a toolkit aimed at educators which provides information on how to plan, implement and deliver engaging collaborative learning sessions to women entrepreneurs, allowing them to share their abilities and expertise and foster participation, skill improvement and networking possibilities for women entrepreneurs. During the project, the partners will share their expertise in training, networking, internationalisation, ICT and skill development in adults, deepen their understanding of the specific competences and skills educators need to possess in order to support women in their internationalisation process.

Target Audiences: Women entrepreneurs interested in internationalisation.

The BEE project aims to create new education opportunities for low-skilled adults facing economic difficulties, living in European Islands, with a particular focus on the blue economy and entrepreneurship skills. Through prioritising the creation of upskilling pathways, improving accessibility and increasing take-up of adult education, the project is focused on the coastal tourism of the Blue Economy. Being one of its major components, coastal tourism accounts for 5.4 million jobs across Europe and makes up 64% of the employment with 41% of the profits in the EU Blue Economy. Therefore, enhancing competences in such fields will allow the target group, young unemployed adults, aged 18-35, facing economic difficulties and fewer educational opportunities, to progress towards qualifications and enter the labour market in a more accessible way, validated through the Entrecomp Framework and the Europass, to ensure proper qualifications to be used after the project. Moreover, the Blue Economy sector is intrinsically related to the environment and the fight against climate change. Therefore, this project also aims to develop sustainable green and blue economic growth.

Target Audiences: Young unemployed adults, aged 18-35, facing economic difficulties and fewer educational opportunities, as well as adult educators who seek to be involved in the production of the project’s results.

The GIGGERS programme for the self-employed aims to encourage and enable the unemployed to create their own jobs by taking advantage of the new trend offered by GIG ECONOMY. The ‘gig economy’ is a new and increasing provision of labour services enabled by the latest technological revolution and accelerated by the pandemic. The project will help provide a new opportunity for the communities to recover more quickly from the COVID19 crisis by helping workers transition more smoothly into other sectors or jobs. This is especially important for workers in rural areas where other employment opportunities have stagnated or may not be available.

The project will concentrate on giving older adults over 50 a second chance after they have been laid off as a result of the pandemic and are unable to re-enter the workforce due to their age, gender, or lack of specific skills, preventing them from working independently and remotely using ICT tools. A typical worker in Europe today who is 40 years old might still look forward to at least 30 years of working life by 2025. Concerningly, those with less education do not have the necessary foundational knowledge, competencies, or support to benefit from possibilities for lifelong learning.

The project will also assist unemployed adults in developing a variety of skills (digital, transversal, entrepreneurial, employability skills) necessary for any worker in the current labour market, as well as a particular set of skills (flexibility, goal-orientation, time-management, elements of accounting, negotiation skills, and self-management skills) required by self-employed people, small contractors, or microentrepreneurs and by any worker interested in working remotely.

Target Audience: Anyone who works in the GIG economy, with a main focus of individuals who are 50 plus

BETES project aims to inspire unemployed people, and other related groups, to learn about emerging technologies and skills that are essential for today’s job search. Therefore, the project will provide an opportunity for the vulnerable groups that are unemployed to learn about new job opportunities and to search for new knowledge.

In order to achieve a positive effect on the skills and competencies, as well as meet the needs of the target groups, the consortium will first address the research phase and learn about the status quo. It will contact both academics and employers to find out exactly what these new technologies and skills are. The consortium will then develop educational materials that will be provided to target groups in the form of a bootcamp school where they can learn these new technologies and skills. The target groups can then decide for themselves whether or not they want to continue their education in such specific fields.

The project promotes equal opportunities for all and will approach the target groups with the intention of equality, which means that the consortium will approach and advise each participant based on their individual needs.

Target Audiences: Unemployed individuals, unskilled employees, long-term unemployed individuals, and generally people who want to be retrained on various technologies

Social entrepreneurship, enterprise, and innovation became a key priority for many funders, including the EU, in the last 10 – 15 years. RevitaLese EU project will address an identified gap in the training offerings available to social economy organisations which will include ongoing support beyond the start-up phase.

The project will support longer-established social economy (LESE) organisations to be more impactful and adapt their business models to be more effective by helping them to adapt to a greener, more digital business ecosystem and lead the way in driving a sustainable economic model that works for people and the planet. Results will include training modules, impact and sustainability report and a RevitaLESE EU network and hub.

Target Audience: LESE organisations, entrepreneurs, NGO’s, educational stakeholders.

The COVID crisis exacerbated gender inequality and issues disabled people are confronting in our society. These marginalised societies are not only excluded from mainstream society economically, culturally and educationally, but are also often subjected to stereotypes, prejudice and discrimination.

EUqualizer is an Erasmus KA2 project which will ultimately tackle the problem of stereotypes. The negative influence of stereotypes is often overlooked and rarely considered. EUqualizer aims to target educational institutions and organisations, with the sole purpose of igniting conversation about stereotypes to different learning environments in order to raise more awareness and inclusiveness. The project will focus on 4 groups that need our attention: LGBT+ community, gender inequality, disability and racism. Skills Zone Malta will tackle gender inequality. Raising awareness will be achieved via research, an awareness campaign and a MOOC toolkit.

Target Audience: Educational institutes, NGO’s, LGBT+ community, gender inequality, disabled and other minority groups.

Due to the Covid 19 pandemic some older people are considered vulnerable and high risk because of underlying conditions. For some, the solution is to remote work and many people are lucky enough to have both the skills and the employment opportunity to remote work. There is also a large group of older adults who simply don’t have the digital skills or the professional competences to remote work. RETAIN-ME responds to those ideals and will develop bespoke training resources to ensure that vulnerable workers can be retained in employment.

Through the results produced by the RETAIN-ME project team, our aim is to support older and vulnerable workers to embrace the digital transition in European workforces, so that they can continue to make active and meaningful contributions to European economic, civic and social life – all facilitated through embracing digital technologies and platforms.

Target Audience: RETAIN-ME project will support business owners and managers and individual vulnerable employees to take the first step towards re-building their social, civic and economic lives, by adapting to remote working.

The Digital way to Employment project aims at empowering women by providing them with an innovative learning journey that fosters their transition into digital occupations. Established women in the digital field will be used as role models and inspirational examples for others to move forwards in digital occupations. The project will deliver an innovative, hands-on learning journey with the objective to help women to explore the essentials of digital careers whilst also supporting mentors and adult education providers capacity to motivate, train, advise and support women on how to take successful steps into digital job-related employment.

Target Audience: Women at risk of exclusion from the labour market and adult educators.

Despite the high level of unemployment in Europe, the hospitality sector is facing a huge shortage of skills (e.g. digital, interpersonal skills, languages, cooking abilities). This trend is increasing, due to inter alia technological changes (e.g. companies need to respond to customer’s needs and be more visible online). Taking into account these challenges, the HoReCa project will provide concrete solutions both for employers and employees with the development of online training tools for VET centres in the field of tourism. The results of the project will generate new opportunities for improved lifelong learning, increased productivity and will help enable a hospitality sector that is fit for the future.

Target Audience: Hospitality workers, education providers, including VET providers and businesses; – VET learners and users; – software developers; – educational and government bodies on national and EU level and business representatives.

C4CC aims to creatively tackle two important societal issues simultaneously – the lack of climate change awareness and the disengagement in society that senior citizens endure after retirement. Calendar for Climate Change will provide seniors with the opportunity to exchange their tacit knowledge with today’s ‘tech savvy’ digital native population in exchange for the technical know-how that the younger generations take for granted.

While senior learners can help to address this need of younger learners for support and direction in their fight against climate change, young people can support senior learners through introducing them to new and emerging technology platforms that can help them to prepare for and engage with the digital transition that is sweeping across European society. The result will be the development of an interactive calendar, with training resources that support the implementation of 12 high-tech climate change solutions and 12 low-tech climate change solutions – meaning one high-tech and low-tech solution for each month of the year!

Target Audience: Senior citizens and young adults.

Due to the rapid growth of digitization, DVAE identifies that EU adults need to be encouraged to engage in acquiring the skills necessary to catch up with the needs and opportunities of modern digital life. To achieve this goal, the project partners will collectively create An Adult Digital Education Skills Kit to Foster Employability by which Adult Trainers can learn how to create content for class as well as use to promote Lifelong Learning to Adults and help them increase their skills towards the labour market.

Target Audience: EU Adult Trainers, Adult Learners and stakeholder related to Adult Education.

Skills Zone’s Role: Dissemination with focus on social media platforms & establishing curriculum case studies for the Adult Digital Education Skills Kit.

The main goal of this project is to involve older people in socially active life by connecting generations. Older people’s groups will be brought together in certain regions of Lithuania, Malta and Portugal, including other organizations that will help bring together older people’s target groups. According to scientific articles, in modern society, older people suffer the consequences of declining social status and lack of respect, so our project will seek to involve young people as volunteers, helping older people to spend their free time more actively and meaningfully.

This project involves representatives from three countries – Lithuania, Malta and Portugal, who will participate in organized trainings and seminars by distance and contact. Good practices will be exchanged, and new ideas applied. This project will take place simultaneously in all three countries. With this project, we aim for continuity after the end of the project. We believe that the created digital tool – a new website will make it easier for older people and want to travel around their country, because they will have the opportunity to choose a volunteer in that country who will spend time together, show the places of interest and attractions in that country. New acquaintances can also help new businesses emerge.

Target Audience: Senior citizens.

The project’s main aims and goals are related to the EU Youth Strategy and the European Youth Goals, in particular: Connecting EU with Youth, Equality of All Genders, Information & Constructive Dialogue, Space and Participation for All and Youth Organisations & European Programmes, all the mentioned before by combating all forms of discrimination and promoting actions to encourage young people’s fair and equal access to opportunities and facilitate their transition to adulthood, including in the civic life, at school and in the world of work.

Each partners’ country will organise an informal school of politics for young women. They will be responsible for running schools in their local communities, evaluate and follow up the participants’ satisfaction with the implementation of the schools after each activity. Throughout the activities of Espolitica we will focus on Engaging, Connecting and Empowering young women. By providing the space, the skills, education, the possibility to network and to get involved with the public authorities we will promote active participation in the civic world in their local communities and on a more national/international level. Through non formal education practises we want the participants to learn and implement new soft skills crucial for overall improving their future employability.

Target Audience: Young women, future politicians, stakeholder groups.

BTO aims to enhance business opportunities in Blue Tourism in Poland, Spain, Portugal, Romania, Greece and Malta through an innovative training methodology (MOOC, mentoring platform) to improve business skills of adult students that help them towards developing their own ideas and companies. It will also tackle skill gaps and mismatches in Higher Education training within Blue Tourism by incorporating innovative tools such as the MOOC platform to improve student learning and encourage teachers to use new innovative teaching methods.

Target Audience: Tourism students, university professors and other higher education teachers.

The EMPOWER Project aims to educate society about domestic violence and support early intervention as a key measure required to support victims to identify unhealthy behaviours and relationships; to build their resilience to address controlling behaviour and inequalities in relationship before it becomes abuse and also to address the stigma of domestic violence and the disturbing propensity of victim-blaming that persists across European society. Project partners will develop a bespoke in-service training programme to build the skills and competences of adult educators to facilitate them in this role, as well as providing key up-skilling opportunities for them to implement the family learning model proposed in EMPOWER.

Target Audience: Adult learning, family support providers; social clubs and senior associations; NGOs working in the field of family support and adult education provision; public bodies and policy makers, responsible for promotion of healthy family relationships, positive parenting and adult education; social enterprises working with senior adult learners.

The FIT strategic partnership overall aim is preparing and testing an improvement program specifically designed to support women entrepreneurs in starting or reshaping their business using circular economy business models with solid financial structure. Women’s entrepreneurship is an untapped source of growth, prosperity and poverty reduction, as well as being fundamental to women’s empowerment for creating societies that are more equitable.

Target Audience: Woman looking for a job, for better work opportunity, for a career change, or aspiring to climb higher in their organization structure or simply, female professionals in any industry and sector looking for an innovative way to improve a wide set of skills. Trainers and HR managers, consultant companies offering services to SMEs, educational institutions and teachers/lecturers in executive university programs.

WINGS aims to empower and support migrant women through economic and social integration within their local communities. Through education and training, migrant women will be encouraged to embark on a journey towards employment and labour market integration.

Target Audience: The WINGS project addresses the needs of 2 main target groups: TG1: Migrant women, and particularly migrant women who are not in employment, education or training due to family and childcare obligations and TG2: Adult educators and non-formal trainers for adult learners.

Skills Zone’s Role: Dissemination Leaders & establish a training scheme, called WINGS Local Action Programme that will give the opportunity to migrant women to participate 50-hour training in blended learning format.