Mental health and well-being of students in higher education is an increasing concern, especially in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic which had a considerable impact on them. Anxiety and depression are the two most common reasons that students seek mental health services. However, professionals who interact with students the most, such as Higher Education institutions’ staff, are not trained to recognize or work with anxiety among students.
AWARE aims to:
● Equip staff with the needed tools, resources and knowledge to recognize, manage, and support students with anxiety.
● Develop and improve anxiety management skills among students, while expanding emotional competence and positive attitudes.
● Accommodate the anxious students in HE Institutions by increasing knowledge and skills among the rest of their surroundings.
NEWSPIRACY aims to raise public awareness of the existence of fake news and their influence, learning about their mechanism and their creation process, in order to be able to detect and analyze them in greater depth. In addition, the project addresses topics on good use of the media, types of fake news, and possible ways to put an end to this phenomenon, with a special emphasis on the development of critical thinking as the main promoter of change.
Specifically, it aims to:
• Develop critical thinking skills among university students on fake news
• Raise awareness of the realities of the most sensitive sectors of society and the negative impact fake news has on them
• Detect and analyse fake news
• Address possible ways to end the phenomenon of fake news
YouthASD, in cooperation with CARDET, has just released a newsletter highlighting the activities and events organized across Europe to commemorate World Autism Day. The partners, from Spain, Italy, Cyprus, Denmark, and Greece, have joined forces for YouthASD Erasmus+ project to raise awareness of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and promote the inclusion of individuals with ASD in the workforce and society as a whole.
We wish to highlight that autism is not a linear condition, but rather a diverse spectrum, each individual with ASD is unique, possessing their own capacities, needs, and interests. Therefore, personalized and specialized support tailored to different stages of their life cycle is necessary to promote their social participation.
To better address this, one of the principal objectives of the 2023 ASD campaign is to draw attention to the variability of the autism spectrum, alongside promotion of social recognition and the sense of belonging to the group. Check out the newsletter to learn more about YouthASD’s efforts or visit the website to stay up to date with the upcoming events.
The main motive behind Way2Go has been to encourage youth to participate in different projects Europe-wide by equipping them with online and networking tools that will help them feel prepared for participation and confidence in their talents and knowledge.
Way2Go also aims at equipping youth workers and other stakeholders with necessary skills through training camps to prepare them for self-assessment before engaging youth with disabilities and/or disadvantaged backgrounds in their activities.
The main deliverables of WAY 2 GO project are:
online platform and app,
skilled and trained Youth Accessibility Ambassadors, and
functional network of project seekers of mixed abilities and open, accessible, and inclusive organisations to partner up and secure fully accessible Erasmus and ESC projects
BENEFIT is a project focusing on empowering youth workers and young individuals to build resilience and strengthen their mental health, improve their well-being and support their inclusion in the labour market and society.
BENEFIT puts forward a comprehensive plan to empower youth workers and youth on mental wellbeing and further youth employability. Following a participatory approach it will develop and make available catered tools for youth to identify and overcome mental strains that derive from challenges in the labour market as well as resources to educate and empower youth workers to offer mental-health informed support. All its work will be available via an interactive eLearning environment.
The main results of the BENEFIT project will be:
-A Toolkit on Mental Wellbeing for Youth
-A Training Package for Youth Workers on Mental Health Informed Youth work
-An Interactive eLearning Environment
-At least 100 Youth will participate in trainings and workshops of the project
-At least 250 Youth workers will participate in trainings and info events of the project
-5 Information and Dissemination events
-More than 10,000 youth workers and youth will be engaged via its work and actions
In many EU countries, linguistic education is limited and generally designed to let refugees reach only a basic level of language knowledge. As a consequence, more appropriate materials and methods are needed. Textbooks and lessons should be built on refugees’ needs and daily life in order to provide immediate and useful help to their daily needs.
For example, language lessons should provide basic lexical knowledge, covering issues such as the asylum procedure, documents, medical needs, job seeking, etc. (Bianco & Cobo, 2019). The importance of education relies on recognizing their qualifications and their overcoming of language barriers, increases the potential of refugees to contribute to the socio-economic progress of the receiving country and thus avoid marginalization (Marcu, 2018).
The project aims at involving a second target group which is represented by women with fewer opportunities. Women with fewer opportunities may be women with low skills as well as women that face discrimination and fewer opportunities in a professional and educational world based on their age, sexual orientation, abilities, skills, educational background, professional background, family background etc.
Vol3DEdu aims to enhance the purposeful use of eXtended Reality (XR) digital technologies in education for teaching, learning, assessment and engagement.
This includes the development of Volumetric 3D educational teaching content, advance digital pedagogy and expertise in the use of digital tools for teachers, including accessible and assistive technologies and the creation and innovative use of 3D digital education content in current practices.
Equally, it includes developing the XR digital skills and competences for teachers in EU and beyond. Particular attention will be given to the free accessibility of toolkits and use from teachers by underrepresented regions. The created digital content will contribute to the objectives of the “Opening up Education” initiative, designed to boost innovation and digital skills in schools and universities to facilitate Open Learning Environments (opportunities to innovate for teachers and learners) and Open Educational Resources (OER: opportunities to use open knowledge for better quality and access).
Furthermore, the project will support multilingualism within the educational content production, which is a forefront aspiration for diversity and inclusion. The tools available will enhance internationalisation of XR Education for teachers’ training as they cater for the growing use of digital learning, flexible learning pathways, 3D environment creativity in line with educational practices needs and objectives.
The Volumetric digital content inclusion follows the digital needs of generation Z students, which has evolved in higher speed than the digital competences of the educators.
The COVID-19 crisis shed light on the importance of digital education for the digital transformation that Europe needs and Vol3DEdu will enable the transformations and change at teacher level leading to digitally improved XR approaches.
