In accordance with its political guidelines in favour of youth integration, Gironde County Council aims at mobilizing ERASMUS+ European Program, to give the opportunity of promoting exchanges and mobility benefitting 8 classes SEGPA (Section of Adapted General and Professional Education) of secondary schools for the period 2015-2017.Gironde County Council challenge is two fold: to plan supporting the reduction of early school leaving and to grantee a better employability of the target publics. Thus the main objective of the project is to accompany the young trainees in the definition of their project of orientation and professional qualification. Both teaching staff and Gironde County Council personnel are aiming at developing new teaching practices and develop a European approach of vocational training. The groups of trainees are composed of 12 to 15 young people per class within the secondary schools members of the consortium. They are on average from 15 to 16 years old, encounter difficulties in the trainings, mainly from disadvantage backgrounds and present sometimes specific needs. They are accompanied by 4 members of the teaching staff and 1 member of Gironde County Council services. The activities carried out during the internship period are integrated into the initial training program and in particular in the PDMF (Course of Discovered Jobs and Professional Trainings) and are in the fields of the secondary schools partners’ activities (Hygiene, Food, Services, Sale, Distribution, Maintenance of green spaces, Housing environment and Building, Industrial production…). The expected impacts are:- reduction of early school leaving - reduction of the academic failure feeling- choice of an adapted training guaranteeing a better employability - uses of the assets of trainings - departmental teaching dynamics - valorisation of vocational training. This project will be evaluated thanks to the tools created for this purpose (ex: creation of the guide of the European mobility) and a valorisation allowing its dissemination on various scales, local, regional, national and European.

European rural areas will boost when their natural resources constitute the basis of innovative and sustainable value chains with a high positive economic impact. In this sense, forests constitute an asset that provide not only ecosystems and biodiversity, but also a valuable and sustainable raw material, “wood”. Wood is consumed by various sectors, including one of the most “raw materials” demanding sector, the construction. The BASAJAUN project is a puzzle composed of 1st and 2nd transformation companies, research organizations, associations and public bodies that are focused on maximizing the forest value through its use in wood construction. Its main goal is to optimize the wood forest resources to enable the construction of a medium sized building (16 dwellings with 4 floors) with the lowest possible forest hectares – that will depends on the tree species and the forest local peculiarities (climate, surface, ..). The whole process will be optimised to maximize the consumption of wood products from the forest (solid wood, fibers, veneers, bark, sawdust, etc.). For this purpose, a) innovative wood-based construction materials (thermal insulation, composites, varnishes, SIPs) and systems (structure, facades, floors, walls, roof and fixings) will be developed and upscaled, b) two full -scale demo buildings (Finland and France) that use those products will be constructed, c) digitalization of the whole construction value chain (from forest to building) will be done and d) the rural development impact will be studied at regional level. The environmental impact of the products of these value chains will be assessed as well. Besides, to assure a sustainable impact of the project a novel thematic platform to integrate the stakeholders of the wood region with urban areas will be developed. Besides, BASAJAUN leverages the previous results of successful projects where the innovative materials and systems were designed at laboratory and semi-industrial scale.

Faced with the intensification and diversification of forms of precariousness, our society today is experiencing a profound renewal of the social question. To tackle these new challenges, Gironde Departmental Council, a local authority which employs about 600 social workers, and 300 health professionals, has conducted a substantive work for a decade to guarantee a public service adapted to new needs. With this in mind, Gironde Departmental Council is committed to rethink social work with the objectives of improving the service provided and placing the citizens at the heart of social intervention to make them actors of their life course. To do this, Gironde Departmental Council is interested in developing innovative work practices advocating a better participation of users as the Family Group Conferencing method that Gironde Departmental Council decided to experiment on its territory in the field of social action.The Family Group Conferencing (FGC) method is derived from Maori traditions in New Zealand. It has developed since the 1980s in Australia and the United States, and since about twenty years in Europe. It remains largely unknown in France, even if, other departmental councils such as Le Nord and Ardèche have experimented it and that this method is being expended.The family group conferencing is a collective decision-making process that mobilizes the capacities of the family and the local social network on the solving of a specific problem. It is based on the concept of the empowerment; whose principle is to restore power to the family. The method can be adapted to any public, regardless of the problematic: intra-family relations, child protection, disability, old age, difficulties in school life, fight against precariousness, housing, social and professional integration etc. The family group conferencing method is initiated at the family’s request. It is prepared with the help of a neutral and independent coordinator trained in this role. The aim for the family is to find its own solution by collectively making an action plan with the people present in the FGC.In order to broaden this experimentation in Gironde, Gironde Departmental Council has decided to develop a European project on the exchange of Family Group Conferencing good practices as a training tool for social workers. This two years Erasmus+ project, has involved three European partners alongside Gironde Departmental Council, who are more experienced in the practice of the Family Group Conferencing method: Tulip Foundation (Bulgaria), Family Rights Group (UK) and Bezirksamt von Neukölln, Berlin (Germany).Three training mobilities were carried out in each of the partner countries in 2018. Having brought together more than 300 participants (social workers, experts, academics, public decision-makers, elected representatives), who share reflections, methodologies and know-how between European partners around the practice of the FGC. The project ended with a European seminar organized in Gironde on April 11, 2019, which brought together a panel of European, national and departmental speakers for a wide sharing of experiences and testimonials on the practice of family conferences. A review of the European project and Gironde experimentation, as well as an inventory of practices in France were presented. This closing seminar, open widely to social work professionals, local authorities, associations, and various partners interested in FGC was an opportunity to develop an emerging dynamic in France and bring together current initiatives. It gathered more than 300 participants, 5 other departments including Le Nord and Ardèche who came to share their experiences in the field.This Erasmus+ project had many local impacts in Gironde and in France. It made it possible to compare the results from the Gironde experiment with confirmed experiences, to evaluate the relevance of the method, the added values ​​and the brakes (for families, social workers, coordinators, and the institution), and to feed the reflection on the project of organization in progress for a generalization of the method on the scale of the Gironde territory. It was an opportunity to promote an emerging dynamic in France and to help establish an interdepartmental network of family conferences at the national level. Finally, the ERASMUS+ project encouraged Gironde Departmental Council to join the FGC European network and participate in the next meeting of the network in 2020.