Demographic ageing in the EU leads more and more people to engage in informal care giving. It is indeed the backbone of care provision in Europe: around 100 million of family carers across the EU provide over 80% of all care, from which 2/3 are women, mainly daughters (in law) and wives/partners. In addition, the number of people affected by degenerative diseases is also increasing, among which Alzheimer represents about 10 million. At the same time, key social changes, such as the massive access of women to education and to the labour market, have greatly impacted care provision. A shortage of labour supply in caring services is expected to reach 20 million by 2025.In this context, TRACK project (TRAining and recognition of informal Carers’ sKills) addressed socially disadvantaged informal carers dealing with people affected by Alzheimer, to support them during their caring experience and beyond, by reinforcing their well-being, skills, and employability. This multifaceted goal required a complementary consortium, composed by 6 partners from 5 member states: • IPERIA, a VET provider and certification body for care workers, • Diputación Provincial de Jaén, a provincial government, • WBS Training, a VET provider,• La Compagnie des Aidants, an association of informal carers• WIAB, a research institution on labour market and education research• EUROCARERS, a European organisation representing carers at EU level.To reach this main project goal, 2 main objectives were fixed:1. to design, develop and test (in France, Germany and Spain) a tailored blended training programme, and2. to develop a roadmap for the recognition and certification of the skills acquired by informal carers thanks to TRACK training and their caring experience, enabling to valorise hem and to identify professionalising perspectives for those wishing so.To do so, a study to define the learning needs and the training offer available for carers in the EU was conducted. It involved 58 experts consulted, 26 publications, 8 initiatives and 10 EU projects reviewed. Its conclusions were validated by 3 focus groups gathering a total of more than 40 stakeholders, among which informal carers, care and health professionals and representatives of local communities: the need of adapted training, the obstacles (lack of time, replacement for caring during training), the preference for blended learning (face-to-face and online) and the most relevant issues (information about Alzheimer, stress management, self-care, communication and daily activities).Based on these results, a training programme was designed in 4 languages (EN/FR/ES/DE) and tested by around 60 participants. A short (about 20h), blended, and micro-learning-based training, including:• The Training kit: user’s guide and face-to-face,• Online resources: eLearning contents, quiz and info sheets.According to the evaluation, 90% of the informal carers were satisfied and 84% considered the training as operational, helping them to be aware of the skills developed (care planning, resources finding, communication and stress management, etc.). In parallel, a feasibility study was conducted to explore further development of the training and certification perspectives, on the basis of interviews with 6 national and 2 international certification experts, as well as the analysis of 25 good practice projects at national and EU level, 8 initiatives and 10 EU projects. The conclusions highlighted the importance of using existing tools and mechanisms (available professional certifications and available processes for the validation of experience on care sector), as well as ensuring online free open access to the training programme to guarantee long-term impact.These conclusions were validated as well by 3 focus groups that gathered more than 60 stakeholders and experts (informal carers, professional caregivers and health professionals, policy representatives, decision makers, validation experts, VET professionals and information providers for the elderly and public employment services, recruitment agencies and enterprises) who considered TRACK training as a facilitation tool for empowerment, professional positioning and employability for informal carers. All these results enabled to draft the roadmap for the recognition and certification of the skills of informal carers, validated as well during the final conference of the project in Brussels. Around 80 participants, stakeholders and experts in the field of informal care and training, as well as representatives of the European Parliament and the European Commission, who made possible to attain a reinforced dissemination and sustainability.

The concept of Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) emerged in Europe about a decade ago. Although numerous competing definitions exist (Von Schonberg, 2011 ou Stilgoe, Owen, Macnaghten, 2013), they all agree that it aims at bridging the gap between science and society. Society becomes an active player in different scientific domains. Especially, Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) are increasingly playing a vital role in research. In the context of the EU policy agenda on responsible research and innovation (RRI) and its focus on public engagement, this role is likely to continue to grow in the future. E.g., there is currently a strong call for and promotion of public participation in research, notably through the EU’s research funding programme Horizon 2020. At present however, CSO participation remains limited. Within the previous Framework 7 funding programme in 2012 only 21% of collaborative research projects reported involving at least one civil society organization (Legris Revel, 2013). Against this background, it is astonishing that there is no systematic research about the different forms of co-producing knowledge by combining variables of social interaction as well as ones of knowledge production. Current research is mainly focused on single cases (e.g. Escobar 2014) and only a few studies offer insights with regard to systematic differences in the research activities (e.g. Frickel et al. 2010). But such insights are of principal interest, if one would like to enhance the options for CSO inclusion in research. Therefore, the aims of the planned EU-project are twofold: Firstly, to analyze thoroughly the interaction for knowledge-production between researchers and CSOs and citizens as co-research and to classify this in different types. Secondly, to build up networks of co-researching by offering web-tools and concrete support for co-research. The originality of the planed European project rests on a dichotomy of the objectives: on one hand theoretical (basic research and applied, knowledge production, data analysis) and, on the other hand experimental, through a co-developed analysis of on-going participatory research projects (citizen sciences and participatory action research). The various methods available to involve the citizens will be listed. The remaining obstacles will be studied in order to go beyond "good intentions" to question "implementable regulation". The consortium will organize many experiments and give CSOs, inhabitants, women, students or lay citizens a chance to get support when they take the initiative of raising scientific concerns or of leading research projects. A web collaborative tool will be produced, including training sessions and train the trainers sessions, and tested within some of our partners activities. A set of participatory tools will be tested and disseminated addressing participatory data analysis ie : empower citizens in order for them to become able to contribute to data analysis (and not only data collection) in different scientific disciplines. Starting from the collect and analysis of existing tools and of their strengths and weaknesses for participatory research, some of the project partners would co produce and test new collaborative tools dedicated to collective data analysis. One key challenge for the planned EU-project is to foster an international network of skilled scholars and non-academics able to promote and manage participative research. The success of the planned EU-project will fundamentally depend on the success to build up such a network in advance. Therefore, the central goal of the proposed MRSEI project here is to set up such an international network while defining the research agenda. This is a challenging process because scientific as well as practical needs are to be considered and the overall cooperation structure has to cover a huge number of partners and to build up a consortium for the EU-proposal.