SmartEnCity’s main Objective is to develop a highly adaptable and replicable systemic approach towards urban transformation into sustainable, smart and resource-efficient urban environments in Europe through the integrated planning and implementation of measures aimed at improving energy efficiency in main consuming sectors in cities, while increasing their supply of renewable energy, and demonstrate its benefits. The underlying concept of the proposal is the Smart Zero Carbon City concept, where city carbon footprint and energy demand are kept to a minimum through the use of demand control technologies that save energy and promote raised awareness; energy supply is entirely renewable and clean; and local energy resources are intelligently managed by aware citizens, as well as coordinated public and private stakeholders. This approach will be firstly defined in detail, laid out and implemented in the three Lighthouse demonstrators (Vitoria-Gasteiz in Spain, Tartu in Estonia and Sonderborg in Denmark). The three cities will develop a number of coordinated actions aimed at: • Significant demand reduction of the existing residential building stock through cost-effective low energy retrofitting actions at district scale. • Increase in RES share of energy supply, through extensive leveraging of local potentials. • Enhance the use of clean energy in urban mobility, both for citizens and goods, by means of extensive deployment of green vehicles and infrastructure. An extensive use of ICTs is planned to achieve integration and consistency in demo planning and implementation, and to enable further benefits and secure involvement of citizens. These actions will be aligned to city-specific Integrated Urban Plans (IUPs), and the process will be replicated in two Follower cities: Lecce, (Italy), and Asenovgrad (Bulgaria) to ensure adaptability and maximize the project impact. Additionally, a Smart Cities Network will be setup to support project replication at European scale.

Erasmus+ KA2 Project - ”First Things First” - Health and well-being in Hairdressing and Beauty care http://www.firstthingsfirst.eu Aim of the project Health and wellbeing is a topic that is becoming more and more important in the fields of hairdressing and beauty care. Self-employment and entrepreneurship are important skills in these fields. A working environment in which attention is paid to health, wellbeing and work safety will enable longer careers. Occupational diseases caused by exposure to chemicals, poor ergonomics and other reasons are commonplace. Chemical exposure is commonplace because health and safety regulations are neglected at work places. Indifference towards health and safety regulations is commonplace. This is a global issue. The aim of this project was to raise awareness on health and well-being in the fields of hairdressing and beauty care. The information that was compiled and produced in this project supports both companies and education providers operating in the aforementioned fields. The increased knowledge will reduce occupational diseases and hazards and will enable longer careers in beauty care and hairdressing. This will, in turn, go hand in hand with entrepreneurship skills and lifelong learning. The aim is to improve working conditions by addressing commonplace practical problems. Products of the Project (Intellectual Outputs) Participants of the project had the opportunity to produce and compile materials that are connected to health and wellbeing. The materials were in various formats: video, text, online clips, audio etc. all compiled into a coherent information package that is freely available at the project website: https://firstthingsfirst.eu/ . The material package can be used by companies and education providers when the issues of work well being and occupational safety are addressed. The digital material package can be integrated into either vocational studies or core skills studies e.g. entrepreneurship, physical education, health education, work safety education and chemistry. Also a digital work wellbeing test was made in the project in the form of a game that is available in Google Play Store for Android. Learning, Teaching and Training events The project covered the span of two years. Altogether 4 Learning, Teaching and Training events were held, one in each participating country. Each meeting focused on specific aspects of health and well-being: work safety, allergies and work related diseases, ergonomics and work well being. Also chemical and cosmetic legislation and microbiology were covered by these events. Avisits to local companies and lectures and training by stakeholders took place. The project's final dissemination event was organized in Porvoo, Finland. The outcomes and products of the project were launched in this event. Partners The project partnership represented 5 different European countries • Careeria (coordinator), Kouvola Region Vocational College and company partner Pikku Reata OY (specialises in hairdressing and beauty care study materials) • 4 partners from overseas - VET education providers: Leeds City College (UK), Albeda College (The Netherlands), Tartu Vocational Training Centre (Estonia), IES Francesc de Borja Moll (Spain) • Working life silent partners: Hairdressing and Beauty Care companies: o M Room (international hairdressing franchise chain) o Sim Finland OY (A Finnish cosmetics factory) Additionally information, materials and consultation were provided by several silent partners.

The Building Capacities in Innovation Procurement for Cities (BUILD) project will roll out a number of training and capacity building actions targeted at upskilling the public procurers on the topic of innovation procurement. Public procurement is a powerful instrument to drive faster adoption of innovation among public sector users while simultaneously promoting economic growth by providing innovative companies opportunity for first user references. The strategic use of procurement to boost demand for innovative goods of services has become an important part of the innovation policy agenda in many EU countries, and is at the core of the new EU public procurement directive (2014/24/EU), which underlines importance of opening opportunities for public procurement of innovation (e.g. by introducing a new innovation partnership procedure). BUILD integrates the highest-quality capacity-building tools to facilitate the roll-out of capacity building and training services to cities. BUILD will engage and train public – private procurers, SMEs and startups via both onsite and online avenues on a number of topics like; 1) Guiding Principles (Valonia) 2) Legal Knowledge and Procedures (Rotterdam) 3) Preliminary market consultation (CE) 4) Pre-commercial procurement (Turku) 5) Competitive dialogue (Turku) 6) Competitive procedure with negotiation (Tartu) 7) Innovation partnership (Valonia) 8) Legal questions and considerations (Rotterdam) and 9) Risk assessment (Valonia). Lastly, BUILD will link and establish synergies with research and innovation projects funded by the EU (via Horizon Europe or other EU funding programmes), with specific focus on EU funded projects fostering PPI, with the aim of facilitating mutual learning and knowledge exchange and will also set up a pro-active dissemination action which will facilitate outreach to key target audiences, namely; public and private buyers, public-owned enterprises, SMEs and start-ups, research institutions among others.

The Agenda 2030 and the 17 Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations (SDG), the UNESCO World Action Program (WAP), EU Education Area 2025, the National Action Plan (NAP) and Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) have a great influence on the shaping of the excellent places of learning for vocational education in Europe!In the future, a globally competitive European economy will essentially be characterized by excellent sustainability-oriented skilled training institutions, including vocational schools. Europe's dual vocational training must be more digital and sustainable and of a very high (excellent) quality so that EU skilled workers with high employment opportunities (minimized risk of unemployment) as service providers can lead a self-determined and secure life. This individual security of life and the consequent relief of social welfare systems contribute significantly to the social stability of Europe.The vocational training network of VET practitioners enables systematic dialogue on organizational structures, sustainability-oriented learning location management, ESD project management, building equipment and material resources, teacher training, digital support systems (in nursing and EGovernance) and necessary administrative improvements through the establishment of state and federal institutes of Vocational Education and their networking throughout Europe.The jointly developed reference framework for the design of digitally supported and sustainability-oriented centers of excellence in VET will promote the further development of national VET systems and the further harmonization of European VET.

A major, albeit underestimated, by-product of urbanization is the exponential increase of human exposure to artificial light. Outdoor illumination, artificial sky glow, domestic lighting, light-emitting screens, etc. entrain circadian clock. Despite scientific evidence on the pathogenic role of circadian rhythms disruption in predisposing to NCDs, affecting sleep, metabolism, immune function and many aspects of behavior and mood, EU cities are mostly focusing on improving lighting services’ efficiency, reducing costs and emissions, but failing to consider lighting impacts on health and wellbeing. Through an open-online Urban Lighting and Health Atlas, ENLIGHTENme will collect and systematize existing data and good practices on urban lighting and will perform an accurate study on the correlations among health, wellbeing, lighting and socio-economic factors in 3 pilot cities -Amsterdam, Bologna and Tartu, where a target district will be selected due to its exposure to artificial light and to reflect social inequalities. Through the establishment of Lighting Urban Labs within the district, citizens and stakeholders will co-create innovative Lighting Urban Plans measures and define the implementation of a smart outdoor lighting system and indoor lighting changes in a pilot area within the district. There, a population-based study on elderly – addressed as a vulnerable group particularly prone to suffer circadian misalignment – will allow to assess lighting-dependent risks on mental and health conditions and surveys involving the overall district population and users will allow assess the impacts of urban lighting on quality of life and wellbeing. The results will allow to develop a dedicated Decision Support System and guidelines and recommendation on the impact of lighting on health and wellbeing, proposing innovative lighting policies, measures, technologies and interventions aiming at improving citizens’ health and wellbeing in cities. ENLIGHTENme is a part of the European Cluster on Urban Health.