More Best-Practice

Our sister organisation Wissenschaftsinitiative Niederösterreich is also active in the area of European Lifelong Learning activities. Find out more about their projects where WIN experts have contributed to their outcomes!


How “micro” can aggression be?

While the important topic of diversity and inclusion is gaining ground in all different contexts, it also exposes more and more of our prejudices and unconscious bias. And even though we cannot influence our prejudices and bias directly, they are the cause of many unpleasant, hurtful or even harmful comments or acts. Often, no malicious intent is behind these micro-aggressive acts or comments. In fact, statements or acts may even be meant in a nice way, while being considered microaggressive at the same time because of the prejudices that are hidden behind it.

Micro-aggression can be about race, gender, LGBT, age, nationality, disability, intersectionality and all other marginalized groups in a society. Such comments or acts, while not always intentional, are an attack on human rights and are in clear violation of the principles of equal human dignity and respect.

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Trauma-Informed Practice For Workers In Public Service Settings

The number of persons in Europe suffering from PTSS is likely to increase in the years to come. The most important causes this project will address include conflict-related refugee flows and other migratory trajectories, Covid 19 and its consequences, and natural disasters like earthquakes, fires, floods, and volcano eruptions.

Thorough needs analyses tell us that especially in the public sector many professions are confronted in their work with clients who have PTSS. These professionals have their specific professional experience but no medical or psychiatric training on how to deal with a person who suffers from PTSS.

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Entrepreneurial skills for digitalisation of agriculture in rural areas

The AgriSkills project aims to strengthen the sustainable development of agriculture in Europe by raising awareness about the digitalization trends in agriculture, identifying the current needs for digitalization in Agriculture and capacity building for agricultural development using innovative solutions and technologies.

  • AgriSkills Modular Training Course: The learning and training program developed in a digitally supported scheme containing five interactive learning modules dedicated for digitalization in agriculture, guiding the learners through the whole process in an easy–to-understand-and-to manage way.
  • AgriSkills e-Learning Platform: It will be organized as an online and offline training enabler. It will be used as a virtual learning environment where our target groups as users will be able to find the training materials and to participate in learning activities.
  • AgriSkills Reference Catalogue: The result will be a well elaborated and published catalogue with collected good practices references for all stakeholders acting in the farming area.

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Including students with Misophonia disorder in schools

The “Misophonia@School” project aims to act at educational level with two different purposes: creating a teacher training course and an innovative screening protocol – built as a mobile application – with which schoolteachers will be able to individuate pupils with Misophonia and to manage their very condition; diffusing among students’ families and other kinds of educators open and scientifically-based knowledge about Misophonia-related issues, through the setting up and running of a European Web Resource Centre on Misophonia and the production of a methodological and scientific handbook.

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WBL – Pathway to Youth Empowerment

The project will develop a practical guide is to deliver clear information on the available EU tools, funding opportunities and solutions available for allowing the quality implementation of WBL practices. Therefore, detailed guidance on the use of such tools will be delivered in, in a way to ease youth NGOs and relevant target groups to apply such solutions, augmenting the opportunities for youth to get involved in, and empower their professional career paths through such learning offers.

The project has also developed a platform for international collaboration, exchange of ideas and partnerships creation among European entities, relevant for the implementation of WBL schemes. The network also support the development of new practices for training and education of young people, in view of enhancing their professional orientation and career development. The network provide space where regional, national and international institutional actors will be free to register and announce their collaborative offers in WBL sector. Those who are in need of collaborative entities, could join the network and operate partner search with specific criteria’s in regards of the practices they would like to operate.

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Skills and Competences for Work in Industry 4.0

“Skills and Competences for Work in Industry 4.0” is a European project funded by ERASMUS+ Program for the period 2020 – 2022. The main goal of the “Industry 4.0 Skills” project is to provide a comprehensive and useful indication of initiatives, programs, methods and materials concerning the development and self-improvement of personal skills and competences in the transformation in industry. Digitization is increasingly shaping the world of work. Computerization, Big data, Advanced robots, IoT, etc. The technologies can readily substitute labour in a wide range of non-routine cognitive tasks and to perform a broader scope of manual tasks. This will change the nature of work to knowledge orientation.

The project focus is on collection of good practices as use cases of successful approaches and practices for implementation of vocational training according to the needs of Industry 4.0.

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Ageing in the Digital Age

Europe is facing a “longevity revolution”, as the number of old and very old people will increase in the coming decades: According to Eurostat, by 2060 one in three Europeans will be over 65 years old, and every 8th person will be at the age of 80 and above. Very old people will thus not be a small minority in our societies but a significant citizen group. The time has come to change the attitude towards them and to shift the focus from inabilities to opportunities and strengths. The older generation needs to be provided with educational support to enable them to remain active members of society and face the challenges of growing old independently for as long as possible.

Statistics show that senior citizens are often missing out the lifelong learning opportunities, although lifelong learning is one of the key factors of successful ageing and helps the wellbeing of seniors in later life, stimulating their social inclusion and interest in life.

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CRISISS – Soft Skills Assessment and Competence Validation for Volunteers in Transnational Crisis

Within a few weeks in spring 2020, the Corona crisis prompted people all over Europe to volunteer on a large scale to help their neighbours and those in need. Volunteering and the associated assumption of responsibility in civil society experienced a completely new appreciation. The tools developed for this (e.g. platforms for matching volunteers) were developed, activated and used virtually “overnight” thanks to digital technologies.
People got involved in the well-being of their neighbours, provided shopping services for the elderly and disabled who could not leave their homes, or took on activities of daily living. They mainly took on tasks that had nothing to do with their actual profession or education, e.g. in care, agriculture or mobility.
As different as the professional backgrounds of the volunteers were, they had one thing in common: volunteering in times of the pandemic proved to be a way to counteract reduced employment and loss of income, to be socially active and to feel part of civil society. They acquired new soft skills such as team spirit, the ability to take criticism, communication skills, intercultural competence, stress management, discipline and self-confidence. Volunteering proved to be an effective learning environment, especially for those people who had to realise that their professional activities were not at all systemically relevant in terms of health crisis management. Strictly speaking, volunteering was a great opportunity to acquire soft skills that could then be used as an additional qualification in any professional setting.
But how can a volunteer recognise these new skills? How can employers be made aware of these skills as an added value for teamwork, stress situations or intercultural tasks? This is only possible if these new personal skills are validated. Even if the wording suggests otherwise, it is “soft skills” that can make the difference in working life.
Therefore, the overall objective of the CRISISS project is to provide support and guidance to organisations employing volunteers to implement soft skills recognition systems that empower volunteers to recognise and value their personal growth in soft skills.

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Money & Life Skills: Stories about money and life

The “Global Shapers Annual Survey 2017” of the World Economic Forum showed that for young people climate change is the most serious issue affecting the world today (48.8%). While 78.1% said they would be willing to change their lifestyle to protect the environment, concerns about water and healthy food were expressed by 18.2%. Only then, young people are concerned about lack of education (15.9%) and lack of economic opportunity and unemployment (12.1%). The “Friday for Future” demonstrations show how serious young people are on climate topics and that they have created their own climate protection movement. It would be a big mistake to classify these young people as truants only without taken into consideration their seriousness in the issue.

Climate change and nutrition issues are closely connected, as agriculture is a main contributor to the production of greenhouse gases. Changes in the diet towards more plant-based foods, towards meat from animals with little enteric fermentation, and towards foods processed in an energy-efficient manner offer a challenging and until now little explored area for mitigating climate change.

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Healthy Future 4U + the Planet

The “Global Shapers Annual Survey 2017” of the World Economic Forum showed that for young people climate change is the most serious issue affecting the world today (48.8%). While 78.1% said they would be willing to change their lifestyle to protect the environment, concerns about water and healthy food were expressed by 18.2%. Only then, young people are concerned about lack of education (15.9%) and lack of economic opportunity and unemployment (12.1%). The “Friday for Future” demonstrations show how serious young people are on climate topics and that they have created their own climate protection movement. It would be a big mistake to classify these young people as truants only without taken into consideration their seriousness in the issue.

Climate change and nutrition issues are closely connected, as agriculture is a main contributor to the production of greenhouse gases. Changes in the diet towards more plant-based foods, towards meat from animals with little enteric fermentation, and towards foods processed in an energy-efficient manner offer a challenging and until now little explored area for mitigating climate change.

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From Refugee to Entrepreneur

In recent years more than one million refugees have come to Europe and the migration trend will continue in the coming years. Apart from political issues of their distribution, the most urgent aspects are their integration into our society and their employment.

Becoming an entrepreneur is always a challenge and often not the most obvious choice for a refugee. Above all, he/she needs information provision, networking (both with other refugees/migrants and with members of the host society), mentoring, training and finally investment and financing. All these are equally relevant in the refugee context. This project provides an overview that can train, support and facilitate entrepreneurship among immigrants, and especially women.

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Prevent Youth Radicalisation

Most young people pass successfully through to adulthood and deal well with the challenges involved in growing up. However, for a critical minority, adolescence is a time when serious problems emerge, or earlier difficulties escalate. They may have difficulties at school, lack good role models or the resilience to deal with new pressures or risks. Maybe they were confronted with alienation from a part of the population and experienced discrimination and open or hidden racism. Since they do not see positive social and professional perspectives, a raising number succumbs to the false promises of extremist ideologies, such as Neo-Nazi groups or the “Islamic State”.

The consequences of not getting support can be very serious. Therefore, these “first-liners” need new skills and competences to be better prepared to deal with intercultural tensions between diverse groups of learners and detect, at an early stage, indicators of radicalisation among their learners. This project will raise their awareness and identify initiatives, best practice examples and tools that help them do their work better, for example, to help find out who is at risk – and the best way of helping people who need support.

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Senior Social Entrepreneurship

Developing a social enterprise as an exciting and active process requires a lot of hard work, but can be a rewarding and enjoyable experience. Especially in the social economy, women find a variety of business opportunities. It is therefore important to empower them to become entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurs and social entrepreneurs look for niches and set up their businesses in these, in order to serve the unserved “markets”. The main difference between business and social entrepreneurs is that business efforts are focused on making profits, while social entrepreneurs aim to bring about social change. For the social entrepreneur, profitability, not profit, is the decisive factor. However, being ‘profitable’ contributes to the self-sustainability of the company.

The awareness raising project materials are an innovative response to the growing role of social enterprises in attracting and motivating older people to become social entrepreneurs.

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Workplace Basic Skills – Training for low-skilled migrants

Some people have very limited literacy and numeracy skills, which prevents them from integrating into society and the labour market. This often affects migrants and refugees who are new to Europe and who need to integrate into the culture of their host countries.

In preparing the project proposal, four areas of work were identified for which the need for specialised solutions should be met. These are the construction, cleaning, tourism, and healthcare sectors, as there are job opportunities in these sectors for low-skilled people, provided they have basic reading, arithmetic and communication skills. The overall aim of this project is to promote literacy and numeracy skills, taking into account the specificities of the individual work areas.

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SKIVRE – Skills Development for the Valorisation of European Religious Heritage

SKIVRE project contributes to the “Sharing Heritage” – theme of the “European Year of Cultural Heritage 2018” by developing a training scheme for manufacturing and marketing of high-quality handcrafted products of European monasteries. Monastic heritage represents an important part of European heritage, shared by all European member states mainly in their rural areas. Monasteries served not only the transmission of Christian faith, but were economic hotspots for the exchange of goods and services.

The fabrication of monastic products is an enormous economic chance for many monasteries to gain income for their preservation efforts as well as for creating employment for local actors, specifically in rural areas. They contribute to tourism industry and economic development. The production of monastic products (e.g. handcrafted personal care products (soaps, lotions), textiles, food (bread, marmalade, liquors, beer, wine), religious gadgets) is therefore a mean for income and a contribution for preserving heritage. Without the production of these goods, monasteries could not survive. The knowledge of manufacturing these products is part of the intangible cultural EU heritage.

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Arguments Against Aggression

The tone in communication becomes rougher. Fuelled by so-called social media, personal communication is also changing, becoming more aggressive and less tolerant both in face-to-face interaction and in messaging in social media. As digital platforms expand their reach ever further, they tighten their grip on the information we circulate and are exposed to. Fake news is thriving in this new media environment – presenting a threat to our democratic societies and providing a ground for a surge in openly hateful racist and xenophobic comments either in social media or in verbal encounters between citizens.

The general objective of Arguments Against Aggression project is to equip citizens with communication and argumentation skills that they can use in social media sites or real-life interactions whenever they are confronted with aggressive, racist or xenophobic messages, inequalities and gender violence. In this way, they will be able to transform unproductive shouting matches or passive-aggressive avoidance into actually productive conversations that should end with participants having a clearer understanding of each other’s views, and build skills and motivation to take action against injustice.

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iHeal – Training older people in digital health literacy to prevent marginalisation and exclusion

The life expectancy of Europeans is rising and by 2050 the cost of EU GDP in health and social services is expected to increase by 9%. In this context, information technology can be our strongest ally in maintaining cost-effective and high quality health and social care by enabling people of all ages to manage their health and quality of life more efficiently. The care provided must be more patient-centred, with a focus on prevention, early detection and chronic diseases. With information technology, European citizens could benefit from better and cheaper health and elderly services. It is estimated that the introduction of information technology alone will improve the efficiency of healthcare by 20% and empower users of all ages to better manage their health.


Core Skills for 21st Century Professionals

The first intellectual output is the development of a common framework (including a method do detect) Core Personal Skills required by companies. The creation of skills maps, both in universities and in companies, are important to adapt the core skills selected to labor reality adapted to the socio-economic environment.

The second intellectual output closely linked with the common framework, designated by Core Skills Assessments set for level of proficiency considers and valorizes the experience of the person, such as learning process and personal growth, especially in the acquisition and strengthening of those core skills. The development of an assessment tool valid for both students and organizations is essential on the Project.

The third intellectual output of the project is a E-Platform will serve as the concrete bridge between Higher Education Institutions and companies. This IO produced for members of the Project, based on universities and companies survey and further research, prepared in a form adjusted to active methods of learning.

The fourth intellectual output devotes attention to the promotion and self-promotion to consolidate and give visibility to the student’s core skills, properly evaluated, through instruments of empowerment by encouraging the search for a job suitable to their own profile. The Promotion and Self-Promotion Tool willprovide a detailed description of the intervention in all its phases and activities.

The fifth intellectual output aim to provide improvements to the CoSki21 Project, through suggestions coming directly from the endusers and through the implementation among trainers in soft skills training measure during the testing period.

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e-Civeles – Digital Competences and intercultural Values in e-Learning Environments

In the e-Civeles project, universities, research centres and adult education organizations join efforts, betting for equitable social models in which citizens may participate actively in the framework of strategies that may strengthen intergenerational communication and cultural awareness among people from diverse cultural backgrounds.

Nowadays, in the European Union, we strive to achieve respect and mutual understanding among different cultures in education and even beyond. In this sense, the e-Civeles project focuses on competence in awareness and cultural expressions, as well as on social and civic competences; moreover, it will enhance skills to learn to learn, it will train in communication and practical skills in the digital environments and it will also improve knowledge and raise awareness of the cultural heritage in Europe.

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PTIP: Posttraumatic Integration – Psychosocial support and low-level intervention for refugees

The project aims to enable non-specialist refugee counsellors to identify refugees with post-traumatic problems (and PTSD) and to provide them with low-threshold psychosocial support and early intervention at low-threshold levels.

Although the massive migration movement that brought more than one million refugees to European countries in 2015 has decreased, it is expected that many more refugees will come to Europe in the coming years. This huge task requires not only additional budgets for registration, accommodation, food, medical care and education, but also a large number of workers. While some of these people have the appropriate professional background as psychologists, social workers etc., the vast majority of people working with refugees, especially in the NGO and voluntary sector, have their other professional background and goodwill to help. But sometimes “well meant” is the opposite of ” well done”.


Jobs for Work 4.0 – The future of employment

Digitisation is shaping the world of work to an increasing extent. Algorithms for large amounts of data are rapidly moving into areas that rely on pattern recognition and can easily replace labor for a variety of non-routine cognitive tasks.

A recent study estimates the probability of computerization for 702 professions and examined the expected effects of future computerization. It estimated that 47% of total employment is in the high risk category. This means that most workers in transport, logistics and production are likely to be replaced by computers. As industrial robots in manufacturing occupations become more advanced, with improved senses and dexterity, they will be able to perform a wider range of non-routine manual tasks. The large remainder of employment in manufacturing occupations is therefore likely to decline over the next decades.

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Smart Patients – Holistic Empowerment of Citizens to become Experts in their own Health

One of the EU Health Strategy’s concrete themes includes „empowering citizens – putting patients at the heart of the system and encouraging them to be involved in managing their own healthcare needs“. Preventive care should therefore not be left alone to doctors and hospitals, also the individual must be empowered and become a „smart patient“.

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Therapy 2.0 – eCounselling and Therapeutic Interactions with Digital Natives

Up to now most activities concerning counselling and therapy with ICT (Information and Communication Technologies) have been limited to applications of personal computers for emails and internet tools. Counsellors and therapists still rely almost exclusively on traditional interaction with their clients (“the couch”). Due to this, especially the younger generation and “digital natives” may not be reached to the full extent, as they have a fundamentally different communication behaviour.

The various Web 2.0 communication tools (like Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, Skype, etc.) have become a daily extension, or complement, of the target groups’ oral communication. Therefore, any counselling and therapy for the younger population that seeks to be successful should eventually include eCounselling – meaning ICT based activities between the expert and the client/patient.

The goal of the Therapy 2.0 project is not only to raise awareness of the potentials of ICT based approaches in therapeutic and counselling processes, but also to provide a practical guide to the different ways of how technology can be used, best practice examples, and a mobile application for smartphones.

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CASYS – Culinary apprenticeship to support youth work and social inclusion

The project aims at providing high quality learning opportunities. The main priorities are to improve e-inclusion in training and youth work at different levels, which promote entrepreneurship education and social entrepreneurship among young people. This will be achieved by improving the quality and relevance of adult education provision in the culinary arts, in particular by developing new and innovative approaches and disseminating best practice.

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Climate Literacy – Education Resourse on Climate Change

By now, we all know the inconvenient truth about climate change: it’s here, and its impact is huge. But there is little use in dwelling on the past, or even the present. It’s tomorrow that interests us. A tomorrow with sustainable communities, which will not make the same mistake twice.

It’s up to all of us to build that new sustainable society. So it’s mandatory that we start by making people aware of how their actions impact the Earth. We must fully understand what our footprint really is. Only then we can start doing things differently and create a Climate Literate Society.

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ESOP: Platform for sustainable electricity

This project has two main objectives: (a) to help people become more energy conscious and save energy and (b) to develop new learning strategies and techniques to effectively train people towards environmental sustainability. To achieve these goals, this project, through an online platform and a Facebook application, encourages people to participate in energy-saving practices, build communities that address sustainability and proper energy use, and increase their willingness to help others become more sensitive to energy and their physical and urban environment.

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ARTIP – Learn about Istanbul Protocol

Tangible and credible findings of psychological and physical injuries in court or asylum proceedings require medical and legal expertise and standards. These are defined in an important but insufficiently known United Nations protocol (Manual for the Effective Investigation and Documentation of Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, “Istanbul Protocol”). The physical and psychological consequences of violence can be used as evidence for the protection of victims, in asylum procedures and for documentation, but they can also influence survivors’ interaction with asylum authorities and other areas of law.

The project provides easy access to training in all legal and medical-psychological aspects of the protocol for specialist groups, including social workers, lawyers, psychologists and medical staff working with refugees and survivors of social violence. The offer includes on-site training to enable professional target groups to carry out such investigations and documentation themselves.

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Love Language and more! – How to Attract Participation and Increase Motivation of Young Male Learners

The main objective of Love Languages and more! is to enable young male adults with particular “resistance to language learning” to establish their “love of language” through increasing interest and acquisition of foreign language skills and to increase their participation in the society of lifelong learning.

In concrete terms, the project aims to communicate the results of two innovative language projects, to update the contents of curricula and manuals and to include the use of information and communication technologies as a very useful motivating factor for further learning. This project is expected to deliver a range of results that will help to develop strategies for young male learners.

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EQF: eLearning Courses for Ecological Agriculture

In the changing environment of European agricultural policy, the demand for high-quality food and a healthy environment is increasing. This has led to a growing interest in organic farming. The market for organic products in Europe is growing consistently. Since 1993, organic food production in the European Union has been strictly regulated. In order to successfully implement economic production in compliance with the regulations, special competence requirements must be developed.

Within the Copenhagen process, priority was given to the development of an open and flexible European Qualifications Framework (EQF), which improves the transparency of qualifications and competences.

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Talk with me – The social way to learn a language

The attractiveness of web-based social networks was the starting point for “Talk with me” as a new, interactive, deeply socially motivated way of learning. The project exploits the potential of a blended learning approach and uses Second Life™ as a virtual interactive 3D social community environment in combination with a powerful learning management system.

The platform offers content for Czech, Slovak, Hungarian and Slovenian. It will motivate target groups less inclined to traditional language learning and promote a rich multi-directional intercultural dialogue between participants and the “outside world”.

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MikroMarkt – Holistic Micromarketing for Female Farmers

With over 60% of the population in the 27 EU Member States living in rural areas (which cover 90% of the territory), strengthening rural development has become a general priority for the EU. Women farmers and their production of local specialities can be a “treasure” for European food culture and diversity. However, insufficient marketing skills prevent this potential from being exploited.

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Food Literacy – Food literacy: a new horizontal theme in adult education and guidance

Since nutritional knowledge is being taught less and less in families and schools, a kind of “culinary illiteracy” threatens. More and more people know little about the origin and quality characteristics of food and are no longer able to cook properly. Health risks and economic costs of unfavourable nutrition are being lamented. At the same time, the eating culture is changing due to new social developments. Traditional eating habits are becoming less important. Food scandals, an oversupply of food and contradictory dietary recommendations are putting a strain on the organisation of everyday nutrition.

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