Erasmus+ Annual Work Programme published for the upcoming 2024 Calls

The 2024 Erasmus+ Work Programme confirms the funding available over the following year and the new direction already established for Erasmus+ in the 2021–2027 funding round. Organisations and institutions seeking funding in the framework of the Call due soon must comply with the conditions for participation and funding expressed, and so should access the latest version.

The document will provide information on:

  • the priorities of the programme,
  • the actions supported,
  • the funding available for different actions,
  • detailed information on participation.

For actions managed by the EACEA, there is an overview of the indicative funding available and the approximate number of projects expected to be funded per action.

The Erasmus+ programme aims to boost skills and employability, as well as modernising Education, Training, and Youth work. The seven-year programme has managed to gain a significant increase compared to previous spending levels from 2014–2020, reflecting the EU’s commitment to investing in these areas after the completion of the first implementation of Erasmus+.

Erasmus+ will provide opportunities for over 4 million Europeans to study, train, gain work experience and volunteer abroad as well as transnational partnerships among Education, Training, and Youth institutions and organisations to foster cooperation and bridge the worlds of Education and work in order to tackle the skills gaps we are facing in Europe. It will also support national efforts to modernise Education, Training, and Youth systems. In the field of Sport, there will be support for grassroots projects and cross-border challenges such as combating match-fixing, doping, violence and racism.

Searchlighter allies with the Eastside Community Trust on the Erasmus+ ComEnter Project

The Eastside Community Trust is at the foundation of community activity in Easton and Lawrence Hill areas of Bristol where Searchlighter is based. With our work in a European context and the Trust’s vast experience on the ground at the most local level, this is an alliance that should allow the ComEnter project to flourish in the UK, with each of us working more effectively in the future.

The first initiative last year was to cooperate on the implementation of the Pilot study to test the training course established in our ComEnter project. This taught local community activists how they can establish sustainable community enterprises where they can draw in income to support their communities directly from their own activities rather than a dependence on good fortune with their grant applications.

In this, the Trust was able to use their experience in the community and their local knowledge to assist in recruiting participants while Searchlighter provided the course curriculum and the post-course mentoring support for those who take part. The aim at the time was to establish community enterprises that could thrive using the resources and innovation of local community members based in this eastern area of Bristol. Eastside Community Trust also provided the location for the course sessions at the Easton Community Centre on Kilburn Street.

Both parties hope that this will be the first of several collaborations in the future and look forward to exploring these. More information on the ComEnter project and the Eastside Community Trust on these sites.

St’ART UP – Pathways for Street-Art Creativity to Foster Inclusive Resilience and Enterprise

Developed as a response to the consequences of COVID-19 for the creative industries as a sector and the insecurities – social, economic and cultural – the pandemic has brought in its wake, this project is seeking to build new educational pathways, nurturing creativity through skills in Street-Art as a means to fostering resilience and self-confidence.

This project seeks is to offer a platform so that young people who have experienced heightened vulnerability in their lives since the beginning of 2020 may be able to develop initiatives inside creative environments, or establish their own environment through entrepreneurship.

The resources being provided set out to enable a range of professionals, including adult education teachers and youth-group community leaders – to teach skills in both street art and small-scale entrepreneurship hand-in-hand with one another.

As a result of this innovative form of education, people who have been most vulnerable to financial insecurity in recent times, or who have found their lives to be even further to the margins will gain capacities to move forward – better able to develop new economic activity in creative environments as well as creating stronger foundations in their own lives.

You can find more details on the work being done in the project from the project website and its accompanying page in Facebook.

Community Enterprise and Responsible Citizenship

In Europe, there is a contraction of local economic activities in marginal areas in favour of inequitable concentrations elsewhere. This creates an imperative to invest in policies and instruments that facilitate new developments, foster the employability of these people and respond to local, shared needs.
This project addresses these challenges.

Do take a look at some of the work that is being done by visiting the Website and its Facebook page.

In a European context, there is a general contraction of local economic activities in marginal areas in favour of inequitable concentrations elsewhere. This makes it necessary to invest in policies and instruments that facilitate new developments while fostering the employability of these people and responding to local, shared needs. This project addresses these challenges.

Socio-economic depopulation means that large areas are deprived of resources able to:

  • Manage essential services such as clinics, local shops, libraries, services of social interest.
  • Enhance or protect the environmental heritage by mitigating the damage of climate change, such as managing natural resources with connected development of light tourism activities, producing/supplying energy from renewable sources, initiating reforestation processes.
  • Support cultural common assets by regenerating abandoned historical buildings, creating paths of enhancement of artistic products or local traditions, and the like.

This reduction in the propulsive capacity of the territories is also due to a reduced entrepreneurial competence in the population, a deficiency which prevents the full realisation of this potential.

This is a shortcoming which mainly affects under-represented or disadvantaged groups – e.g., women, young people, those past 50 years of age, unemployed, migrants. These groups all suffer from facing significant barriers to access to self-employment opportunities.

The project believes that fostering the employability of these people and responding to local and shared needs is facilitated by the pathways and instruments that encourage the learning of entrepreneurial skills and participation in the common life of territories.These facilitate the rise of social enterprises that are based on activity in solidarity that may become the basis for sustaining economies within local commons.

The project therefore aims to strengthen forms of active citizenship and eco-citizenship, promoting integration processes especially in the social and therefore in the working world.

The instruments implemented will target adult women and men from marginal areas (inner or suburban and urban areas) who want to achieve greater social and working integration through enterprise while involving also the referenced communities who may benefit from it in terms of responding to shared local needs.

In particular, we seek to ensure equal access to groups with the greatest difficulty in gaining access to self-generated employment due to their stated disadvantages in the economic marketplace.

Robots for STEM

Developing a low-cost mobile robotic kit aimed at children and young people aged 10–13 years. The kit is designed to work as an interdisciplinary teaching tool that can be applied directly to a curriculum. This promotes students’ technical skills and allows the development of new skills aligned to Computational Thinking and Problem Solving.

Signed Safety at Work

Creating opportunities for companies and organisations to supply high health and safety standards in the workplace that are both effective and inclusive. It is developing a new approach to the visual communication of health and safety messages that is inclusive across the needs among a workforce, especially for the Deaf and migrant communities.

Better-E applies e-Learning in Adult Education

Based on the partners’ experience on barriers to e-Learning, ‘Better e-Learning for All‘ (‘Better-E’) proposes a global approach to create better e-Learning.

Better-E logo-erasmus-plus

The Project’s name is already providing information about its objectives by demanding an upgrading on the quality of e-Learning practices and simultaneously an enhancement on the number and characteristics of the Organizations and people to involve in e-Learning.

Partners are aware of the common cross-border barriers to e-Learning in the context of Adult Education as these had been identified by the partners previously. These barriers had been divided into several categories:

– Accessibility: the physical and technological infrastructures in which the learning occurs and through which the material is presented.
– Availability: appropriate learning resources.
– Presentation: the social infrastructure in which the material is presented.
– Stakeholders: learners, trainers and organizations.
– Courses: course content and pedagogy.

Considering these barriers as an ensemble, ‘Better-E’ proposes tools and methodologies to diminish them, providing solutions both from technological and pedagogical perspectives. The solutions will be gained with due consideration of the fragile autonomy held by stakeholding learners, and the empowerment necessary for the changes to take place.

‘Education’ and ‘Training’ are not foreseen as the only key scopes for e-Learning practice as the ‘Better-E’ Project sets out to foster Social Inclusion and Cohesion as identified objectives achievable through an improved implementation of e-Learning practice. The enhancement of both the practice and the quality of e-Learning, the increasing of the number and type of e-Learning promoters and, above all, addressing significant social issues through better e-Learning practice are all being identified as significant if intangible results from the project.

The project Objectives are, among others:
– to propose, to test and to create a user-friendly and pedagogy-centered e-Learning Platform for course promotion;
– to introduce and to incorporate e-Learning into organizations (chiefly training-provider NGOs) usually not currently including e-Learning practices;
– to promote e-Learning as an inclusion device, in the context of traditional Education and Training being regularly considered to be a mechanism for social inclusion while e-Learning is not
– to use e-Learning to encourage active citizenship and entrepreneurship through initiatives fostering green skills, entrepreneurial mind-sets and appropriate skills.

The Project will directly target two main groups: (1) Training Provider NGOs, and (2) their targeted audiences. The philosophy sustaining it is the need to generate e-Learning best practices as close as possible to organizations providing Adult Education and Training Systems but usually without the application of e-Learning. Engaging them with e-Learning practice will consequently benefit their learner target-groups by engaging the learners in ways that will reduce the potential and risk of social exclusion.

The Project foresees the direct involvement of dozens of NGOs from the partner countries.
The scientific, pedagogical and technological scopes of the deliverables are prepared and will be applicable to the entire range of e-Learning stakeholders, including Schools, Universities, Private Training providers, among others.

Project promoters will engage in Preliminary Research to upgrade the State-of-the Art for the application of e-Learning with regard to a range of organisations, policies, countries and learner backgrounds. The partners will then conceive, test and launch the ‘Better-E Platform’, an online tool to fully conceive e-Learning courses, embedded with technological solutions while addressing important pedagogical concerns.

To test the Platform and engage final beneficiaries, the Partnership proposes the conception, testing and delivery of two e-Learning courses: (1) ‘Entrepreneurship’, promoting active citizenship through enterprise while applying innovations that can break the cycles that perpetuate social exclusion. (2) ‘Easily Moving from Learning to e-Learning’, an instruction course that includes in part a guide to the use of the ‘Better-E’ Platform.

The ‘Better-E’ title not only seeks to engender thoughts of better e-Learning, but also may identify ambitions for a ‘Better Europe’, by means of strong European Partnerships contributing for better common societies. It may also recall a common pronunciation with the word ‘Battery’, symbolising energy generated through partnership, aligning the project with the Erasmus+ global priorities and aims.

VETAAL – Vocational Education and Training for Ambient-Assisted Living

VETAAL_Logo

VETAAL seeks to integrate AAL – Ambient-Assisted Living – systems in furniture to create products that can offer ‘smart’ support for people in the later stages of life or people living with physical disability so they might live independently.

The project fulfils this by training staff from the furniture manufacturing sector to provide them with the skills for designing and manufacturing these products where ICT sensors are integrated into the frames of the finished articles. The training will mean the furniture manufactured will be in accordance with specified safety requirements so they are CE marked and fulfil ISO Standards, fulfilling legal and safety requirements for European and International Markets.

The VETAAL platform will connect experts and students from the furniture sector. Users will have the chance to share information, knowledge and experiences with other EU users. VETAAL will also become the first step for collaborations with an approach to enhance the EU cooperation in AAL and its correct integration in the furniture sector. For the project Partners, VETAAL reduce the dependency of furniture SMEs on other auxiliary organizations like environmental consultancies, and will offer competitive Smart Support Furniture for AAL to them as SMEs.

The care and support of elderly and disabled people is an emerging, niche market for the furniture sector. To cover the requirements of this group, more and more furniture organizations are focusing on this market, even integrating AAL (Ambient Assisted Living) systems in their final products to produce what is called Smart Support Furniture.

However, it has been found that most of the furniture manufacturers do not have the skilled employees required for designing and manufacturing products for this sector according to the specific safety and mechanical needs (CE marked, ISO Standards, etc) that these products must accomplish to fulfil the legal and safety requirements for European and International Markets. Consequently, the main objective of VETAAL is to address the challenges of the vocational skill mismatch that the new demand of an AAL-integrated Habitat has produced, by the development and validation of a harmonized European curriculum based on the principles of ECVET in the area of design and the manufacture of Smart Support Furniture that provides e-learning through introductory face-to-face sessions to provide experts working in the furniture sector or preparing to enter the labour market.

The specific objectives (SO) of the VETAAL project are:

  1. Define skills needs in the field of AAL and requirements for designing and manufacturing Smart Support Furniture for Ambient Assisted Living.
  2. Design and develop a Joint Curriculum on Smart Support Furniture for Ambient Assisted Living by implementing innovative methods in e-learning and face-to-face learning.
  3. Develop a Multilingual eLearning Platform for teaching the remote learning part.
  4. Involve VET policy makers contributing to the outcome dissemination to guidance services, representative organisations as well as to relevant national, regional or local authorities, exploiting the project outcomes and recognizing it as a standard VET model, which will ensure a high impact on VET policies.
  5. Develop a Memorandum of Understanding: Defining criteria for memorandum of understanding and recognition of learning outcomes and concluding a MoU to shape future operational partnerships between partners.
  6. Develop Draft training recommendations that can be adopted by training institutions in all European countries
  7. Develop Draft training recommendations that can be adopted by training institutions in all EU countries

VETAAL will set three different training paths depending on the user’s professional background. The training paths will also be based on four main learning pillars (Basic concepts on electronics, design and ergonomics, psychology and needs of elderly and disabled and AAL integration in furniture) which will be developed in detail between all the partners according to the real training needs of the target sector.

IGUALA – a gender equality training package

This project will allow the translation and adaptation of a flexible on-line gender equality training package developed in Spain as a result of a project in the framework of the EQUAL Initiative between 2005-2007.

The objective of the project is the development of an Internet-based platform to deliver the Equal Opportunities course for teachers and trainers enhancing education and employability practice under the Lisbon Agenda. The adaptation will take into consideration the national idiosyncrasy of the other members of the partnership comprising SMEs, vocational and training associations, research institutions and non-profit associations.

The aim behind a Leonardo da Vinci Transfer of Innovation project is to improve the quality and attractiveness of Vocational Education and Training (VET) in the participating countries by transferring existing innovations to new environments through working with transnational partners. Innovation transfer projects generate synergies by exploiting existing VET innovations. These innovations can be based on previous Leonardo projects, or on any other national, European or international innovative projects, and can be transferred into vocational training systems and organisations at national, regional, local or sector level.

The partners in the project – from Spain, Bulgaria, Italy, Poland, Portugal, France, Germany and UK – considered the lack of gender skills in training staff. As equality between women and men is a key principle of European policy, gender mainstreaming should be present at the design, development and evaluation of the VET systems. In doing so, it is necessary that VET practitioners and staff linked to the VET system increase their skills and competencies on gender equality.

A study by Eurydice “Gender Differences in Educational Outcomes” from 2010 pointed out that traditional stereotypes are a challenge for establishing gender equality in education in EU member states, and that it is difficult to find gender specialists working in academic institutions who could help trainers, tutors and teachers to design pedagogical units from the gender perspective.

The proposal required the consortium to analyse the needs of the target groups, identify innovations that in principle are suitable, select those that will meet the needs of the target group in the best way, and analyse the feasibility of the blending and the transfer. We explained how the project would blend the selected innovations, adapt them to the legal framework and training system – public, private, sector – as well as adapting them to the language, culture, geography and needs of target groups. We showed how we would transfer them to, and test them in, the new environment, and how we would integrate the transferred innovations into a range of training systems and practices.

There should be a result from this application in June 2011.

Professionals communicating for young people to prioritise health

Currently there are wide variations between European countries in the quality of training available to professionals working with young people in activities that include health education.

The aim behind a Leonardo da Vinci Transfer of Innovation project is to improve the quality and attractiveness of Vocational Education and Training (VET) in the participating countries by transferring existing innovations to new environments through working with transnational partners. This project, ‘PROCOM-VET – Effective communication methods for professionals to promote and encourage young people for healthy lifestyle choices’, looks to transfer a successful and innovative training as applied for health educators in the Veneto region of Italy and adapt it for a region in Turkey, so arresting the disparity between these two regions.

Innovation transfer projects generate synergies by exploiting existing VET innovations. These innovations can be based on previous Leonardo projects, or on any other national, European or international innovative projects, and can be transferred into vocational training systems and organisations at national, regional, local or sector level. The objective here will be for the project to focus on tobacco and for this to be applicable as a case study that will allow further adaptation for professional training concerned with the use of alcohol and drugs and also applicable in the other countries participating in the work of the project.

The partners in the project – from Italy, Turkey, Poland, Germany and UK – envisage the impact of a region gaining a critical mass of professionals trained in the approach adopted in Veneto will bring a confidence among many regions to assess their basic approach to communicating with young people on the subject of substance abuse, opening the door to an increased engagement with young people regarding how they might make positive decisions on health issues related to substances that they will hold on to throughout their lives.

The project will transfer an approach for improving the communication skills of medical staff and educators, in part by building an online portal and virtual learning environment adaptable as a virtual location and forum for VET in health education skills connected to substance abuse across many countries and regions in Europe. The innovation will provide the medical staff with skills to establish effective communication and new methods to approach their young patients in order to fulfil their duties not only as healers but also as practitioners of preventive medicine.

As with IGUALA, the proposal required the consortium to analyse the needs of the target groups, identify innovations that in principle are suitable, select those that will meet the needs of the target group in the best way, and analyse the feasibility of the blending and the transfer.

There should be a result from this application in June 2011.

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