Blog

The Re-Think / Re-Act project started in February 2022, with partners from Portugal, Finland, Spain and Cyprus.

The partners first met at the first TPM which was held in Córdoba, Spain in April this year. This gave the partners the opportunity to discuss the project in detail, organise tasks and set deadlines for the duration of the project.

Re-Think / Re-Act focuses on the inclusion of secondary school students with adaptation difficulties in classroom due to poor training of soft skills, which, currently, supposes a real challenge for education systems, since they tend to focus their training on hard skills as a priority.

The partners will seek to respond to the horizontal priority of inclusion and diversity in all areas of education, training, youth and sports, as well as the priority sectorial of addressing disadvantages in terms of learning, early school dropout and insufficient master of basic skills. In this way, the needs of the students will be attended to to promote their personal development and, with it, a true inclusion, being able to accompany them in the search for their own talent and training them to adapt satisfactorily to their school, their community and the demands of society, including the acquisition of skills that allow them to know and integrate the soft skills.

Current progress:

IO1 – Together App (2Gapp)
An application for adequate teacher coordination that facilitates easy communication between the authorities responsible for the development of each student.

The Spanish coordinators are responsible for the management of this output. The app is currently in the creation stage and will be complete by March 2023.

IO2 – Rethinking for Schools (RFS)
An assessment tool for the inclusion of students that lack soft skills, giving guidelines and routes for improvement in educational work.

The responsible organisation for this output is Learnmera Oy, Finland. The content for this assessment tool has been created and is in the stages of finalisation. The development of the webspace is currently under development by the Cypriot partner.

IO3 – Re-Act Webspace (RAW)
An educational platform with motivational methodologies and resources to help educators support students in the best way possible.

The webspace is currently under development by UCY, Cyprus. Each partner is currently in the process of creating the video material. A timeline for the creation of the all content has been set for the near future.

IO4 – YOUDO
An interactive digital tool to encourage student motivation and make participation in activities to facilitate their development of soft skills more attractive.

YOUDO is a game aimed at students who need to understand and work on soft skills. As with the other outputs, this is also under development and will be complete by March 2023.

—

The next TPM will be held online in October 2022 where all partners will be present and every aspect of the project will be discussed, including the progress of the intellectual outputs, ensuring they are on track for completion March 2023.

Learn more about the project, and follow the projects progress. Follow on Facebook @projectrethinkreact and Instagram @rethinkreact_.

The project is financed by Erasmus+ KA2: 2021-1-ES01-KA220-SCH-000032542

Mental Health+ helps vocational education and training (VET) organisations, as well as schools in general, become ‘mental health positive’ by ensuring that they adequately support the mental health of their students and staff. This is being achieved through the development of a series of resources that will help VET organisations improve their mental health provision.

Project end and official launch of the outputs
As the Mental Health+ Project comes to an end this month, we wanted to remind you that the resources produced during the project life cycle are free to access for all VET organisations, career guidance centres and other similar providers that are interested.

The first project output saw the development of:
• A MH+ Charter, which outlines the minimum requirements an organisation should adhere to in order to be mental health inclusive.
• An eBook, with country-specific information around mental health and best practices which you can incorporate into your organisation.
• A European report into mental health inclusion.

For the second output, the project partners produced the interactive Mental Health+ Benchmarking Tool based on the Charter. This allows you to determine how mental health inclusive your organisation is by answering a series of questions, and it offers advice on how you can improve your mental health inclusivity.

The digital Benchmarking Tool has been piloted by representatives of VET institutions, schools, colleges, career guidance centres and local authorities. We have also developed a Mental Health+ Champion Skills Profile which helps you develop and select a Mental Health lead. As this will be a requirement for all UK schools by 2025, now could be the perfect time to start assessing your mental health provision, and to dedicate a member of staff to lead on incorporating these changes.

Aspire-igen (UK) are the coordinators of this project with partners BFE from Bulgaria, CESIE from Italy, INTRAS Foundation from Spain, Learnmera from Finland and Hugarafl from Iceland.

To read more about the project partners, visit the project website.

To find out more, read our blog post and visit our website:
www.mentalhealthplus.eu

Transnational Meetings
We have held four transnational meetings that allowed us to discuss the progress of each output in detail and for us to planning of related events. Our first meeting took place in Valladolid, Spain and focused on the first output, as well as ensuring that everyone had the same understanding of the scope, aims and impacts of the project.

Our second, third and fourth meetings were also supposed to take place in person (in Iceland, Bulgaria and Italy), but were instead held online due to travel restrictions imposed in each of our countries due to COVID-19. The remote aspect had no bearing on the success of the meetings or the progress of the project and we finalised the first output documents, which can be found here, the Benchmarking Tool and the Skills Profile of the Mental Health Champion.

The project is financed by Erasmus+ KA2: 2019-1-UK01-KA202-062036

The project has had its online kick-off meeting, which has to put into motion tasks needing to be achieved for the project to reach its goal. The project aims to prepare a set of educational materials developing creativity for the target group being young parents.

The schedule has been set for the first in-person transnational project meeting in Poland in October 2021. There will also be training about astrophotography resulting in a tutorial video.

Dates for the following meetings have not been set and will be scheduled in Poland, considering CoVid restrictions.

Training in Egypt about documenting a personal story: the results will be online educational materials.

Training in Georgia on cultural heritage resulting in a toolkit for educators and parents.

Training in Greece about dance and choreography. The result will be online educational materials.

Learnmera will be responsible for the coordination of the international digital marketing of the project.

Additional obligations for all partners will be:

• Translations of all material results into the partner languages.
• Coordinating a Facebook page for the target group in the national languages of the partners.
• Project promotion including social media and website.

The City Quiz & Walk project is a fun, engaging, interactive phone app development designed to enhance immigrants, ex-pats, and students’ cultural education. It began in September 2019 and is due for completion in September 2021.

City Quiz and Walk project, coordinated by Learnmera, is in its final stages of development. In the scope of the project, extensive research on mobile phone apps and gamified education has been conducted, and the development of apps for Helsinki, Paris, Vilnius, Lisbon and Athens has been completed. Now the project has reached its final stage of external pilot testing for the mobile apps.

The fun to use gamified education value is unquestionable, and the quiz and quest questions are informative to the local and the visitor alike. The pilot testing ensures that the app experience is of high quality, glitch-free and unhindered by errors.

All multiplier events for the phone app have taken place in August. The final multiplier event marking the launch of City Quiz-Helsinki is scheduled for Tuesday, August 31 at Apollo Street Bar, Mannerheimintie 16, Helsinki, from 17:00 – 19:00. The event is expected to draw 20 guests from the public, where refreshments and snacks will be served.

Facebook | Website

The project is financed by Erasmus+ KA2: 2019-1-FI01-KA204-06073

The AWARDS (autonomy and well-aging reinforcement for the adult people with down syndrome) project is in its early stages, with the kick-off meeting happening only a few months ago.

In recent years, thanks to the developments of treatments, people with DS are now expected to live to being 60 years old. Because this is a relatively new phenomenon, there has not been much research in to parenting aging adults with DS. With this in mind, there is a lack of knowledge for families and carers of aging people with down syndrome. The project is concerned with support for families and professionals working with adults over 30 years of age with down syndrome.

There are two different results with a series of activities to be implemented for project AWARDS. The first result will involve creating a skills and interests test for adults with DS for proper professional and social orientation and developing multimedia training tools for healthy nutrition and physical exercises and sports training.

The second result will include creating training modules on sexual health and health protection, and an e-learning platform to host the project’s results. Training activities and conferences will also be held in the countries of the participating organisations.

For more information and updates on the project visit to Facebook page.

The project is financed by Erasmus+ KA2: 2020-1-TR01-KA204-094615