The project idea came from analysis of the situation regarding the intercultural competences (IC) which in today's reality are a major key competence. The importance of IC has been recognised by EC and educational entities but it is still not yet prevalent or even common for every country to include intercultural education into every educational path. The extent to which the competence development is included in VET varies from country to country but interculturality has never been a major concern in vocational education. Instead, professional skills have always been regarded as being of the most importance. Consequently, there are many VET trainers who are experts in their field but when it comes to knowledge or experience in delivering their classes to learners from diverse cultural backgrounds, they have a real deficit detrimental to the content and delivery of their teaching. Taking into account the mobility of workers not only between EU countries, but especially from non-EU countries, VET Trainers need to be aware of intercultural differences and to be able to deal with various cultures every day. In view of this situation, the main objective of the project was to develop and increase intercultural competences of VET Trainers' dealing with diverse learners in Germany, Italy, Poland, Bulgaria, Ireland and Netherlands. The partnership consisted of organisations working in VET education area and dealing with diverse learners: assist (coordinator), Danmar Computers, Diciannove, ITT, IBI, CKE and RUNI. Each member in the consortium organizes VET courses and in addition, Danmar has IT expertise sufficient for development of digital part of the intellectual outputs. The target group of the project were VET Trainers working with diverse learners from different cultural backgrounds, staff of VET providers which deal with diverse learners and public officials responsible for VET management and policy-making at the level of VET education. The project directly involved over 2000 participants. The main undertaken activities in the project included work on the main results, meaning that the activities included searching for tools, preparing database, work on content, digitalizing the materials and their extensive testing and improving. Important activities included quality assurance and dissemination of the outcomes in order to assure their exploitation also in other EU countries and other fields. The dissemination included Multiplier Events. The results of the project include tangible results which are two main intellectual outputs: 1) Open Online Catalogue of Intercultural Tools implemented as an on-line application available as OER consisting of three parts: - database of intercultural tools (collection of tools developed within previous various initiatives and projects as OERs and that relate to intercultural education), - training materials about culture in the form of e-learning, - guide on how to develop simulations for intercultural training.2) Guidelines for Practical Application of Intercultural Aspects in VET Context. Besides intellectual outputs, the project created dissemination materials (website, social channels, leaflets, newsletters, articles, presentations) and working materials including plans and very important intangible results. Those are: increased intercultural competence and through that, vocational skills of VET trainers, increased awareness of VET trainers but also other stakeholders about existence of various tools they didn’t know before, opportunity of being involved into European project which brought new knowledge and experiences for target groups, stakeholders, participating organisations and participants. Other intangible results are: stronger cooperation networks of those who worked on the results or participated in various activities of the project. In case of VET providers, they gained useful and innovative tools that they could include into own educational offer. The impact of the project exceeded the expectations. It can be seen in partners’ organizations, their staff and learners, VET trainers, operators in the field of VET education. The most important is that all who participated in activities or at least heard about its results, have better awareness about intercultural issues and available tools that can help in rising intercultural skills. Moreover the usage of the Catalogue itself helps in increasing ICT skills. In addition, the open character of the Catalogue (possibility of adding new tools) assures its self-expandability which might bring benefits to interested groups of users in the long-term.

agroBRIDGES aims to build bridges between producers and consumers, rebalancing farmers market position by empowering them with knowledge about new business and marketing models. The proposal will mobilise local farmers through Short Food Supply Chains (SFSCs), focussing on decreasing intermediaries and their margin. Precisely, agroBRIDGES will follow a knowledge-based, holistic, systemic approach built on two pillars: (1) a multi-actor framework pursuing demand-driven innovation; (2) a combination of communication materials, training programs, events organisation and IT tools gathered in the agroBRIDGES Toolbox as the ultimate instrument that will provide practical support to producers, consumers, contracting authorities, distributors, academia, etc, improving farmers position in the value chain. Both regional and pan-European approaches will be considered along with the project, where 12 Beacon regions will be involved in the creation of this multi-actor framework, directly involving ca. 400 people in information collection, knowledge exchange, co-creation, co-development and validation of project outputs. Full EU roll-out, replication and training will be conducted, supported by a strong dissemination campaign and coordination with other EU projects and initiatives as SCAR-AKIS and EIP AGRI through a clustering plan. Main impact in the short term will be ca. 150 persons trained on topics related to food procurement and how to mobilise innovative agri-food supply chains and support local producers, while in the medium-, long-term it is expected a 5-8% increase of farms totally or partially involved in direct sales to consumers and an increase in farmers income for the value of the output ca. 35% average thanks the developed new SFSCs models. This way, agroBRIDGES will make an ambitious contribution to the Common Agricultural Policy unlocking the full potential of Europe’s inner wealth by placing producers as a cornerstone for boosting European agri-food sector.

MOEEBIUS introduces a Holistic Energy Performance Optimization Framework that enhances current (passive and active building elements) modelling approaches and delivers innovative simulation tools which (i) deeply grasp and describe real-life building operation complexities in accurate simulation predictions that significantly reduce the “performance gap” and, (ii) enhance multi-fold, continuous optimization of building energy performance as a means to further mitigate and reduce the identified “performance gap” in real-time or through retrofitting. The MOEEBIUS Framework comprises the configuration and integration of an innovative suite of end-user tools and applications enabling (i) Improved Building Energy Performance Assessment on the basis of enhanced BEPS models that allow for more accurate representation of the real-life complexities of the building, (ii) Precise allocation of detailed performance contributions of critical building components, for directly assessing actual performance against predicted values and easily identifying performance deviations and further optimization needs, (iii) Real-time building performance optimization (during the operation and maintenance phase) including advanced simulation-based control and real-time self-diagnosis features, (iv) Optimized retrofitting decision making on the basis of improved and accurate LCA/ LCC-based performance predictions, and (v) Real-time peak-load management optimization at the district level. Through the provision of a robust technological framework MOEEBIUS will enable the creation of attractive business opportunities for the MOEEBIUS end-users (ESCOs, Aggregators, Maintenance Companies and Facility Managers) in evolving and highly competitive energy services markets. The MOEEBIUS framework will be validated in 3 large-scale pilot sites, located in Portugal, UK and Serbia, incorporating diverse building typologies, heterogeneous energy systems and spanning diverse climatic conditions.