"The Agrarian Vocational School of Vagos was founded in September 1989 by program contract concluded between the Municipality of Vagos, Vagos Agricultural Cooperative and Agricultural Secondary School of Vagos. In the year 2000 it takes the designation of Vocational School of Agriculture and Rural Development of Vagos (in Portuguese, EPADRV), assuming the status of public authority and moves to Gafanha da Boa Hora, where occupies an area of approximately 10 hectares.EPADRV, investing and developing their work in proximity with the region in which it operates, is today a center of development in the areas of Agropecuary, restoration, environmental and rural tourism and renewable energies with the HelioAgro project. It also promotes contests, events, catering services. It produces daily hundreds of liters of milk and annually tons of vegetables.Under the slogan ""A school for everyone, qualifying each one"", it has responded to dozens of youngsters, who annually seek for a qualified training of excellence. In the constant encouragement to youngsters to complete their school careers successfully, the school instituted awards for the best students in different courses, thus recognizing individual merit and the action of every student in school and in extra-school community activities.A school is not only done by students and therefore the training body has not been neglected. All the training body members have training available to them, through the training center or partner companies. This training is always an asset and, in some cases, a requirement for the reviews. For EPADRV it means leveraging and maximizing the potential of each professional trainer and teacher, in order to ensure the greatest success of their students.EPADRV defined their project through the identified needs, taking as general objectives: ➲ Promote new experiences and life-experiences in international territory ➲ Promote the interest of learning other languages ➲ Provide training skills to youngsters that enable them to be co-responsible in the economic recovery of the region and the country ➲ Provide visits and international internships of reference ➲ Fight school abandonment➲ Promote the employability of its students, with a target of 75% ➲ Increase the mechanisms of internal management, planning and monitoring of activities ➲ Promote a continuous training plan based on the needs detected by teaching and non-teaching staff ➲ Promote stability among teaching and non teaching staff, with updated skills and more ability to respond to the challenges posed by a student body in constant changeFor this project we propose the involvement of several participants, covering all the bodies of the school: ➲ 15 students from vocational training: 4 from Agricultural Production; 4 from Equine Management; 4 of Restoration 4 of Industrial Maintenance ➲ 5 teachers of Portuguese, Mathematics, Philosophy, English and ICT. ➲ 5 (technical/ operational) professionals: 2 Administrative, 1 Librarian, 1 Operational Assistant and 1 Coordination of School Administration ServicesThe activities planned to take place during the project are: STUDENTS - Academic Internship (12 weeks) and language and cultural training course (1 week) EXPECTED TIMETABLE - June to September 2015STAFF – Activities of job shadowing (2 weeks)EXPECTED TIMETABLE – April and May 2015Destination of the mobilities:France / Spain / Germany➲ 15 students from the courses of Agrarian Production; Equine Management; Restoration (Cooking&Bakery/Restaurant Industrial MaintenanceSpain➲ 2 teachers – Mathematics and Philosophy➲ 3 staff - SAE Coordination; Librarian; Operational AssistantItaly➲ 3 teachers– ICT, Portuguese and English➲ 2 staff – administrativeThe desired impacts in the PARTICIPANTS are: ➲ Strengthening the personal profile of the participants ➲ Improved self-esteem➲ Solid European experience and knowledge of European dynamics ➲ Master of strategic European languages ➲ Increased motivation for the studies ➲ New entrepreneurial attitudes and of personal investment ➲ Attitudes to enhance human rights, citizenship and gender equality ➲ Consolidation of the certified Skills in the training path ➲ Up to date and competent teaching and non-teaching staff ➲ Competent technicians in school management and relationship with students ➲ New methods of fighting failure in core subjects ➲ Setting a larger network of peer contacts at the European levelThe disclosure and dissemination of the project will take place at the beginning, middle and end, using Internet, press and radio, and with the following target-audience: ➲ School community ➲ Population of the county ➲ Companies and prospective employers in the region ➲ International network of partners ➲ Partners / international investors – promotion of the regionThe international partners will promote the project in their networks.All the documents will be included in the final report."

The general objective of NOVASOIL project is highlight the benefits for the society and the environment from the investment in soil health. The main expected outcome of the project is a toolbox for the analysis of suitability of different business cases that promote soil health. This toolbox will be based on a set of good examples from Europe and other countries and the needs and demands from the society. The toolbox will include a categorisation of the models and business cases taking into account: a) sustainable soil management under different land uses and climatic conditions; b) products based on practices promoting soil health; c) consumption and certification practices conductive: d) the reuse of land and e) sustainable soil management in the context of the EU Taxonomy Regulation. For that, NOVASOIL is composed by a multidisciplinary team with a large experience on European and national projects focus on soil health and business models. As well as, NOVASOIL will built a Community of Practice around project objectives in order to co-develop soil health business models and the tool-box for incentives taking into account their needs and demands. NOVASOIL is organised in 5 WPs plus coordination following the expected objectives and impacts of the call. The first step is to develop a conceptual framework of soil health and business. This framework will nurture other WPs in order to develop in the same way all the expected objectives. The soil health business models will analyse current successful experiences in Europe and outside Europe in order to categorise them taking into account their variability. In addition, NOVASOIL includes 13 Case Studies with business models that promote soil quality and products based on sustainable crop and soil management. On the other hand, an analysis of current policies related will be carried out in order to provide suggestions and improvement that facilitate the implementation of these soil health business.

Agriculture and food industry having a high dependence on resources in their production and striving for long-term sustainability. In this context there is an urgent need to optimise resource use and smooth the transition to a knowledgedriven agriculture. The NUTRIMAN is a Nitrogen and Phosphorus thematic network compiling knowledge “ready for practice” for such recovered product applications, practices and technologies, interconnecting applied science and industrial practice, for the user interest and benefits of the agricultural practitioners. There is an urgent need to spread knowledge and network information towards agricultural practitioners about the insufficiently exploited N/P recovery innovative research results (technologies, products, practices). The project objective is to improve the exploitation of the N/P nutrient management/recovery potential for the ready for practice cases not sufficiently known by practitioners. Our action will open new opportunities for farmers to develop connections between applied researches with practical usefulness results and farming practice in the priority area of nutrient management and nutrient recovery. Uses a bottom-up approach to identify incentives and bottlenecks for adoption and to prioritise between technologies/products and will ensure larger willingness to adopt innovations and improve multiplicator effects. Large scale take up of the recovered N/P innovative fertilisers targeted, produced from un-exploited resources of organic or secondary raw materials in line with the circular economy model, and economical/environmental efficiently used by farmers. Effective dissemination and exploitation promoted by multilingual web platform, other communications and best practice field demonstrations for farmers. This action is contributing to the successful deployment of the vast reservoir of existing scientific/practical knowledge on the N/P recovery theme, including multi lingual abstracts in EIP-AGRI format.

SMARTPROTECT is a thematic network focusing on cross regional knowledge sharing of SMART IPM solutions for farmers and advisors. The aim is to stimulate knowledge flow in the regional AKISs across the EU and connect these on the innovative potential of advanced methodologies for Integrated Pest Management (IPM) in vegetable production, integrating precision farming technologies and data analytics. Through a well-balanced consortium and an emphasis on multi-actor approach the outcome of the project and exploitation of its results will stimulate an increased adaptation of IPM methodologies, taking the specific regional needs of farmers across Europe into account. The EU-wide concern for environmental sustainability and economic competitiveness for agriculture requires the entire agriculture sector to grow under IPM conditions. This project develops a basis for a common EU approach to collecting, sharing, managing and disseminating knowledge on IPM in order to maximise the knowledge flow. Farmers from different European regions will thus dispose of the latest knowledge, best practices and practical tools for the implementation of IPM in their daily practice in crops in open field and greenhouses. The project provides an e-platform for exchange on a variety of innovative IPM techniques. We will benchmark practices in the frame of their socio-economic and regulatory context, select those with a high innovation potential and disseminate them through participatory events including cross border exchange visits. Local and regional knowledge sharing will lead to interactive cross-regional seminars for farmers and advisors, resulting in a final SMARTPROTECT innovation rally. The project’s results will be deployed through a targeted communication and wide dissemination strategy, providing an online data sharing platform and close interaction with EU and national initiatives and projects, the National Rural Networks and the EIP-AGRI.