"In all the contemporary countries, the main macro-economic target is to reach the full employment level and make an efficient use of resources and especially of human resources. Unemployment or inactivity means that scarce human resources are not being used. Eurostat statistics show that unemployment/inactivity is mainly gender specific and women have been more affected by unemployment/inactivity than men. Wastes of human resources are more costly especially when ""work experienced"" women do not work. We choose to focus particularly on women, who cannot work due to several personal life limits, although they want to work; together with young women who have talents for handcrafting, but not very efficient in marketing their handicrafts due to lack of knowledge and/or experience. Mentoring as one of the best possible solutions for both groups, is to better combine work and private life, transfer accumulated knowledge and experience to the individual who needs for also improvement of her productivity. So, underlining the fact that mentors are aware of specific challenges that young women micro-entrepreneurs face and have the ability to identify and engage in opportunities for ongoing reflection and sharing of knowledge and experience at mental level, F2F-Trust model is a win-win model for both participating target groups, who are actually final beneficiaries of the action. This primary target group of F2F-Trust project, who are young women living in rural areas without knowing the real value of their handicrafts actually in need of sincere professional support for overcoming this serious barrier - not knowing the actual value of their talent and resulting products. They are still being in the group managed structure, by being employed as unpaid family worker or taking part in similar positions in family businesses. Handcrafts they produced are small scaled, non-standard, not having the capacity to create broader markets and their inability to get through to formal scale economy can be considered as major problems of these women regarding entrepreneurship and handicrafts marketing. Therefore, they cannot use their capacity and opportunities. Thus, the best working solution for them is F2F-Trust mentoring, replying to their all needs and overcoming their very visible problems. Based on these clear and verified facts and needs, a comprehensive mentor/mentee training program will be developed by the project team in a way that ultimately, potential mentors will be trained step-by-step regarding how to lead in women's way. Through mentor training they will have received, mentors will be able to provide a systematical guidance to young women living in rural areas producing handicrafts. Thus mentors will give insight about the fundamentals of actual business life and prepare for mentees through difficult situations by helping them to acquire the necessary knowledge, skills and confidence and mindset. Also, a mentor who knows the local market conditions, providing also insights about local practices and opportunities, is an invaluable resource for young woman who are seeking for this valuable support - most probably also being not aware of her need at this moment. At the end of the mentor program, mentees will understand the value and be able to go outside of their local bazaars and sell their products nationwide and even they may be able to e-export abroad as an exporting micro-entrepreneur owning products which are complied with the international standards. Thus, this project open the way for mentee to transform their handicraft products into revenue through mentoring. According to the mentoring model, which we are proposing, mentors and mentees will share the same objectives and the take same business risk - destiny - or achieve to similar commercial success. Mentors will take in the business in return for providing of their exertions and guidance. Also, the mentor and mentee may maintain this partnership in future periods. They not only do have the potential to gain, but they will have a personal satisfaction of seeing enterprise succeed through this kind of mentoring. So, mentoring will help for both mentor and mentee to become more productive and improve their socioeconomic conditions. In final and global sense, the project will contribute to rural development strategies by providing alternative job creation approaches in rural areas with creating employability of women of each Member State and its regions, by providing mentor/mentee training and creating a model for establishing the mentoring relations between young and mature women."

The deterioration of water quality, caused by climatic/seasonal changes, or industrial waste etc. is a major global concern. Over the last decade, water quality observing technology has risen to the challenge of scientists to identify and mitigate poor water quality by providing them with cost-effective tools that can take measurements of essential biogeochemical variables autonomously. Yet, despite these options becoming more readily available, there is a gap between the technology and the end-user (including the investigators and technicians that deploy these technologies) due to a collective lack of training, in-depth knowledge, and skilled workers who can meet new and emerging challenges. There is also a disconnect between data quality, data gathering by autonomous sensors and data analysis, which is a major obstacle, as the sensors are already being deployed (e.g. through buoys, boats etc.). AQUASENSE will address these challenges through 15 early stage researchers (ESRs), who will receive 540 person-month of unparalleled multidisciplinary training in the field of water quality monitoring. Each ESR will be mentored by carefully selected experts from academia and industry in 9 European countries (UK, Germany, Ireland, Serbia, Sweden, Italy, Poland, Austria, Estonia) and will have access to state-of-the-art equipment to develop autonomous sensors for improved data quality. The autonomous underwater robots and drones will be used to improve the data gathering and AI methods will be used to improve the data analysis. Hands-on project training will be supplemented with formal training courses in relevant fields such as new materials, sensors fabrication, wireless communication, system integration, and robotics, and a variety of complementary courses such as IPR, grant writing and exploiting the scientific results. Mobility within the network will ensure exposure to complementary academic and industrial research environments.

CIMULACT has as a main objective to add to the relevance and accountability of European research and innovation – Horizon 2020 as well as national - by engaging citizens and stakeholders in co-creation of research agendas based on real and validated societal visions, needs and demands. The project will expand the outlook and debate on STI issues, increase scientific literacy in a broad sense, which includes the understanding of the societal role of Science, Technology and innovation (STI), and create shared understanding between scientific stakeholders, policy-makers and citizens. This multi-actor approach will embrace EU28 plus Norway and Switzerland. The CIMULTACT builds on the principle/conviction that the collective intelligence of society gives Europe a competitive advantage, which may be activated to strengthen the relevance of the European science and technology system. By establishing genuine dialogue between citizens, stakeholders, scientists, and policymakers visions and scenarios for the desirable futures will be developed and debated, and transformed into recommendations and suggestions for research and innovation policies and topics. In short, CIMULACT will ● Create vision and scenarios that connect societal needs with future expected advances in Science and their impact on technology, society, environment etc. in connection to the grand challenges ● Provide concrete input to Horizon 2020 through recommendations and policy options for R&I and simulated calls for the Horizon2020 Work Programmes. ● Engage citizens and stakeholders in a highly participatory debate/consultation/process on scenarios for desirable sustainable futures and research ● Build capacities in citizen and multi-actor engagement in R&I through development, experimentation, training and assessment of methods for engagement ● Facilitate dialogue and shared understanding between policymakers, citizens, and stakeholders ● Reveal the relative merits of the citizen focussed consultations

"The strict social distancing measures implemented in Europe due to the pandemic affected a multitude of social activities. Traditional learning and training was one of them. CoViR project will develop through co-creation participatory processes a pioneer multiuser e-learning platform embedding virtual reality collaboration rooms that will simulate class training while offering innovative tools (inside the 3D environment) that will allow for different kind of interaction between the trainer and the trainees. All participants in the virtual classroom will be able to hear each other and see their avatars moving as they move wearing the VR headset. At the same time, they will be able to change their avatars facial expression at real time and select body movements at will(non-verbal communication). Each participant will be able to load his own materials in the presentation board of the room (slides, video, images,sound), will be able to talk to each other, will be able to answer questionnaires, to vote, to change roles with the trainers and make a presentation, applause, drink or eat something and much more activities that will be decided during the project as adequate for the proposed platform.CoviR platform will be piloted for the needs of the “Communication Skills” subject, that is considered a difficult subject to be taught online. The project will prepare the necessary training materials and tools that will facilitate trainers to offer the course through the VR collaborative platform. An e-learning platform with training materials and video tutorials on VR training will be used along with a teachers' guide to prepare trainers. The trainers that will follow the e-learning course will receive a certification. The certified trainers will train 3 trainees per country on the communication skills course using the CoViR VR platform to test themselves and the virtual reality tools.The objectives of the project are:-to develop a Collaborative VR platform that will be able to host online training courses. -to train trainers and certify them to the use of VR and the CoViR platform for online interactive training-to develop and test with real students a communication skills course entirely delivered through collaborative VR training.-to develop an e-learning platform for training trainers in the use of VR technologies and the CoViR platform especially -produce a teachers’ guide for the sustainability and further use of the platform and accompany materials.The consortium consists of 4 VET Providers, 1 certification company and 2 IT companies with experience on VR and the development of online training materialsThis activities of the project will lead to the following tools and materials: - A Collaborative VR platform that will be able to host online training courses with the ability to bring together simultaneously multiple users from different locations. - An e-learning platform with training material on VR technologies and the use of CoViR platform for teaching ""Communication Skills"". - A certification scheme with assessment tools that will be used to certify the trainers that will follow the e-learning course. - A teachers’ guide that will include a detailed teaching plan for teaching ""Communication Skills"" using CoViR platform with all the digital materials one will need to run his/her training. The methodology that will be used follows a co-creation approach through the organization of focus groups in the 4 countries of the consortium. The advantage of the project is that 4 partners are also potential consumers of the end products enhancing the sustainability potential of the end results. CoViR project clearly presents an International Impact. The results, a VR collaborative training platform with supporting e-learning materials and a comprehensive guide are expected to create impact in the VET sector promoting the use of modern technologies in online training.We expect that the project results will attract key players in the VET sector in European and International level. The cooperation of VET providers with IT experts and a certification body in a co-design approach will lead to innovative and efficient tools professionally assembled by the adequate training materials to support trainers to adopt them. It is expected that after the end of the project, VET partners will continue to use the platform for part of their training activities and new opportunities that will arise from the use of these state of the art tools."