Project SHAKER (fully named as Supporting attractiveness of health and social care professions in regions) arose from the initiative of 3 European regions – the Moravian-Silesian Region (CZ), the Great Eastern Region (FR) and the Lubelskie Voivodeship (PL) - as the follow-up of the previously set, functional and long-lasting cooperation among them. Taking into consideration European population aging, not only in the above mentioned regions there are concerns about nursing and health professions development. For this reason, the 3 regions decided to focus on this subject as all of them remark shortages in health and social care professions and have difficulties in attracting people to this branch. A similar situation occurs in the Gelderland Province, so the Dutch region decided to join the project. The difficulties in attracting people to nursing, social care and health vocational training and education, as well as lack of the qualified and skilled workers in this sector seem to be due to the growing needs of the aging societies, low salaries and hard, time-consuming character of these professions. Therefore, the regional administrations and the vocational schools from these regions have decided to face this challenge together.Project objectives are primarily aimed at the direct exchange of good practice; sharing the experience to identify solutions implemented in other EU regions, which could be experimented on local and regional levels and to get a know-how and knowledge about new initiatives, tools, instruments and strategies to promote health and social care trainings and professions. The main interest will be especially focused on: how to promote health and social care professions among youth and people looking for a career change; how to avoid schools’ drop outs; how to facilitate the transition from the school’s environment into labour market and how to encourage people to stay in this branch and support them, as well as the institutions employing them. Project partners are the regional authorities represented by officers and executives responsible for/operating in the fields of health and social care, education and labour market. Other project partners involved are the vocational schools, aimed at the health and social care fields of study and their representatives from the school management and/or career advisors. Last, but not least, the project counts also with the participation of the representatives of the local institutions and organisations from the health and social care sector as associated partners.The project activites consist of the short-term joint staff training events, which are planned to be held in each partner region, 4 in total. Participants of these events are supposed to be: the officers and executives from the regional authorities, and the schools representatives from the partners´s vocational schools. Plus, there will also be other representatives of local organisations and institutions from health and care sector involved. These events are supported by the transnational meetings of the regional coordinators, which ensure the continuity of the project progess on the sufficient level. And finally, the local meetings of regional coordinators with the other regional project participants will be held regularly during the project realisation, helping the participants to deal with all possible problematic issues and keeping all project activites run smoothly, thanks to the participants´ feedback and evaluation.Planned results and impact of the project will be both, tangible and transferable. The tangible result will be the handbook of the good practices and recommendations, concerning the best tools or strategies possible for the implementation in the field of health and social care sector to make those more attractive. Moreover, the handbook will present digital tools that might be used in the medical and social training and in the work environment by the professionals. This tangible deliverable will be created and disseminated among all interested institutions and administrations from the mentioned sector in all 4 regions. The knowledge and experience gained during the project activities will be transferred to other local institutions, regional administrations and vocational schools during the local and dissemination meetings organized in each region. In addition, we will aim to promote/make accessible the handbook using digital tools such as a webinar or vlog, to stimulate its usage. All in all, this collaboration in an international environment will allow to deepen existing mutual cooperation among the participating European regions, and to create a new network of health and social care institutions, potential bearers of the future European projects.

Even popularly thought, landscapes are much more than visual sceneries. Instead, they are environments for dialog between nature and culture. The 2004 European Landscape Convention (ELC) is the first international treaty to be exclusively concerned with the protection, management and planning of all dimensions of landscape, and not restricted to exceptional landscapes but also considering everyday landscapes.The Landscape Approach (LA) is a bottom-up, collaborative and community-based approach to landscape planning and management, with the aim of balancing competing demands in a way that is best for human well-being and the environment. It means creating solutions that consider food and livelihoods, finance, rights, restoration and progress towards climate and development goals. LA opens opportunities to discuss and negotiate from the more concrete shared reality, with the outline of values, expectations and acceptable trade-offs for each type of user and stakeholder, in order to envision future landscapes upon the principle of non-regressive policies of the ELC.Living and thriving landscapes are increasingly related to wellbeing and quality of life, and the public administration cannot manage them with traditional sectoral thinking. Hence, many private corporations, NGOs, landowners and citizens, are developing or getting involved in experiences to regenerate or manage landscapes in environmentally friendly ways. It is a novel trend by which communities and stakeholders are gaining ownership over the spaces that conform the green and blue infrastructures of ordinary surroundings, but also a solution for endangered or highly valuable and very sensitive natural areas at international scale.Even if the ELC has affected the national landscape legislation, the basic ideas of the LA are seldom implemented in landscape practices. As a consequence, landscape remains prone to social conflicts, as landscapes’ multifaceted nature and multistakeholder legitimacy are insufficiently considered.The partners of the consortium are willing to tackle the question, how actors and stakeholders can collaborate into the governance of a landscape. Thus, the main aim of the project is to enhance landscape awareness and collaborative governance of cultural and natural landscapes through innovative learning interventions in higher education. The specific objectives of the project are:- To promote integrated landscape approach in land use and environmental management.- To enhance civic engagement to bring-on pro-environmental behavior towards every day landscapes and threatened landscapes.- To innovate in citizen science and participatory methods as tools for landscape planning and management.- To design innovative learning environments and interventions for landscape education in order to ensure collaboration and knowledge creation.The project activities will culminate in Learning Labs organized in the partner countries. In the Labs, HE students will be offered a close-up experience about community-based landscape planning, management, and conservation initiatives with stakeholders, like local authorities, environmentalist NGOs as well as local citizens. While working on concrete situations of action students are guided to collaborative knowledge creation together with stakeholders and generating new knowledge, skills and innovations.In addition to the main target group of HE students and teachers, the project recognizes other target groups, like policy-makers, local and regional authorities, environmental planners and managers, environmental NGOs and citizens.Expected results of the project have been foreseen into societal, scientific and educational results:Societal results:- Exploitation of integrated LA through interactive applications and participatory methods ease off the deployment of collaborative landscape governance- Awareness of landscape values increases and citizens are more engaged to act for their local landscapes- New knowledge and improved flow of communication between policy-makers, authorities and citizens- Citizen science application is an open-access tool for every interested userScientific results:- Contribution to the theoretical discussion of the holistic nature of landscape- The rise of the methodological awareness when studying landscape - Elaboration of the connection between the LA and the citizen science- Emphasis towards the idea of open scienceEducational results:- New transferable HE landscape education methodologies, applications and materials - Enhanced skills and competences of the students and teachers involved in the project activities- New pedagogical innovations based to the socio-constructivist learning theory- Increased ability of involved students to comprehend and act on the multifaceted processes of landscape governance- Innovative learning environments and interventions play significant role in landscape education