Eradicating all forms of exclusion, discrimination and marginalisation that result from disparities and/or inequalities, as well as reducing the student drop out rate remain key challenges for the higher education (HE) sector in Latin America. Through the design and testing of educational centers for support and development (CADEP), the ACACIA project aims to foster solidarity and cooperation among HE institutional departments and staff in order to develop innovative educational resources and improved strategies to deal with the socio-emotional distress of students at risk of desertion. Thanks to better intra- and inter-institutional cooperation, the project will provide solutions to strengthen HEIs’ staff skills, modernise HEIs’ organizational structures, decrease student drop out rates and ultimately promote respect of the other’s differences. The structure of the educational centers, articulated in mutually supporting modules, has been developed by a team of researchers and administrators from 14 HEIs in 8 countries from Latin America and Europe. It represents an innovative and replicable tool for HEIs to provide students, especially the most vulnerable, with integrated support using a differential approach. Concretely, the project will set-up three pilot centers in Colombia, Peru and Nicaragua to support and monitor students at risk, carry out training sessions for staff at HEIs, explore new strategies for teaching and improve the use of ICTs in educational practices. Thanks to the project, more than 4,000 teachers and 200,000 students from 11 Latin American universities will benefit from an innovative and relevant professional profile, helping to improve academic results and reduce the drop out rate among students.

The participation of Women in STEM in the Latin-America region is a very complex problem in which necessarily call for actions from different actors, such as governments, private sector, families, as well the different levels of education (since childhood to higher education). In order to make concrete contribution, Higher Education Institutions need to focus on those needs and situations in which it has certain influence for making real progress, such as:- Significant minority of Women choose and access to STEM programs at tertiary level. The lowest rates appears in science and engineering programs. - Data is scarce, showing a need for analytical and systematic methods, which reflect actual participation of women in STEM at HEIs. - Tertiary studies with a high math component such as STEM seem to be excluded from the studies options by girls in secondary schools. - Lack of bridges between public policy and institutional actions led by HEIs. In this way, and aligned to the Erasmus + Capacity Building priority for improving management and operation of higher education, in terms of access to and democratization of Higher Education, the W‐STEM Project aims at Improving strategies and mechanisms of attraction, access and guidance of Women in Latin-American STEM Higher Education programs. For achieving this main objective, W-STEM project, will • Measure the gender equality in enrolment and retention rates in STEM programs.• Implement Universities’ policies, strategies and organizational mechanisms for improving attraction, access and guidance at undergraduate levels in STEM programs. • Promote STEM studies vocation and choice in girls and young women in secondary schools as well as guidance in the first year of the STEM program. • Develop an online training package for Higher Education Institutions to implement effective strategies to enhance attraction, access and guidance of Women in STEM programs.

This is a project-based on cooperation between 5 European and 10 Latinamerican universities. The main objective of the Project is to integrate social innovation in academic curriculum and learning environments in Latin American Universities to promote quality improvement in academic programs through fostering competence to solve regional social problems. This implies: 1. Design and apply educational models to promote competences on social entrepreneurship and social innovation amongst university students.2. Design and offer academic strategies to develop competences on social entrepreneurship and social innovation.3. Design valuable methodological tools for academic programs to improve understanding of the community`s needs and offer inclusive, sustainable solutions for detected problems.4. Design a monitoring system to evaluate curricular development on social entrepreneurship and innovation competences.5.Design and implement institutional policies and programs for administrative, academic and support management to promote social innovation in Latin American Universities.6. Create alliances between Latin American and European Universities interested in promoting social entrepreneurship.7. Support existing social incubators in participant universities to improve links between educational tools and students learning process to foster creativity and sustainability in social projects.With these activities, the Project will achieve short and long term impact at four different targets: institutions, teachers, students, external/Social Stakeholders. Then, the Project has some specific key indicators that serve to review the progress and the impact of the actions:1.Reporting the state of art of Social Entrepreneurship in participant institutions2.Guidelines of competencies on social innovation. 3.Toolbox for teaching social innovation including methods for working with different external stakeholders (NGO’s, Companies, Communities) 4.Selection and Confirmation of pilot courses and teachers that will implement social innovation methods or activities inside their courses. 5.Teachers’ participation in the training program on how to design and implement social entrepreneurship within selected courses during the pilot period.6.Implementation and monitoring of pilot projects7.Identification and early development of institutional support actions to enhance innovation and social entrepreneurship in HEI. 8.Results and impact of pilot projects To accomplish this, there are seven important moments or milestones in the project. 1.Kick-off meeting- Mexico (Starting Point, Clarification on Tasks & Expectations)2.Valencia meeting (Progress and Difficulties of the Project)3.Teachers online training (Expectations)4.Porto Alegre’s meeting (Satisfaction and Usefulness)5.Pilot’s implementation (Progress and Difficulties)6.Talca’s meeting (Results and Impact, this meeting changed from the city of Talca to Bgotá). 7.Final Meeting (Results and Impact)By now, we have passed through all the moments mentioned above covering 8 key indicators listed before. There were changes to some of the actions conceived at the beginning. These changes were discussed with the Steering Committee, as part of our internal quality measures; and later, were discussed with our Project Officer, to grant here authorization. The changes imply an improvement in the impact and the results of the project. The previously expected impact was: the implementation of a methodology in SI and SE in 20 pilot courses, 450 students implicated, 55 trained teachers, the reinforcement of social incubators in the participant universities with an impact in the communities, and the implementation of measures for the mainstreaming of social innovation. The final impact overpassed these numbers: 70 courses, 1614 students, 56 teachers trained.