European Development Agency

The Multiplier event of the VINA project was organized by the European Development Agency on Tuesday, 20th November 2018 in Prague.
The event was open for public and the audience was composed by adults with and without a university degree, students in their final year of studies and university absolvents planning to do some sort of validation of their informal or non-formal skills. In total, 30 people attended the event.
There was a presentation about international projects in general, with an example of VINA project. The aims of the project and the partners were presented, the Database and the ROTA Analyzer were shown and explained to the participants. The participants were provided with refreshment and soft drinks.
The project is coming to its end and you can see all outputs created by the consortium of partners on its website: https://www.vinaproject.eu/. Moreover, you can read its brochure explaining the outputs and the whole project here.
 

                
 
Intellectual outputs of the VINA project
VINA project focuses on Validating Informal and Non formal Acquired Skills. It is an European Cofunded project coordinated by EURO, an Italian Research Centre. Partner organizations are: European Learning Network Ltd (United Kingdom), Evropská rozvojová agentura s.r.o. (Czech Republic), e‐Compass (Greece) and Fundacja Instytut Rownowagi Spoleczno Ekonomicznej (Poland).
Through international partnership we aim to exchange good practices and support people in Europe with a simple to use instrument, which opens opportunities to make their skills visible and clearly validated.
Our main products include:

• Database – database of effective instruments for validation of informal and non-formal qualifications
• Analyser – Recognition Opportunities Tendency Analyser R.O.T.A.

are complete and ready to use. They are both available on our website: www.vinaproject.eu
 
VINA Database
VINA Database is ready to help users looking for information, projects and their outcomes, European and international organizations, and tools around validation of informal and non-formal education.
VINA Database is designed according to the recommendations of a tool categorisation of Cedefop, agency which helps European Commission, EU Member States and the social partners to develop the right European VET policies. It takes into account different categories: the phases of validation, areas of interest and our target groups.
What is interesting is that users are able to add new tools/entries and also translate any tools/entries in any language. These features allow us to expand the database fast, through collaborations with individuals and public and private organisations. These collaborations of course will continue to develop in the



following years allowing to exploit the possibilities of the database to the highest level. The database will be maintained by EURO for at least another 5 years.
 
Recognition Opportunities Tendency Analyzer (R.O.T.A.)
Along with the database, we have also developed a Recognition Opportunities Tendency Analyzer (R.O.T.A.) mechanism. It uses a special algorithm assigned to each tool and evaluates them according to the number of visits to each tool in a collaboration with the searches in the database.
The results are displayed in a table and also in a graphic format. The table shows the main tools that reported the most visits and searches in the database. The chart next to the table shows the tools with the major index number, signifying popularity and therefore the skills searched.
At R.O.T.A page we include additional statistics concerning the tools we keep in the database. These are the country of origin of the users, the visits from computer or from mobile phones or tablets, the types of Operating Systems etc. This information helps to extract additional conclusions of the preferences of tools, discover tendencies of the users and other information such as the profile of the users that use our database. Thus, again signifying popular skills being searched.
Multiplier events
After completion of VINA outputs, dissemination events will take place in all partner countries. During this events we want to share our database and ROTA with groups interested in informal and non-formal acquired skills validation. We would like to invite you to participate!
 

Between 16^th and 18^th October 2018, a meeting of Alterdrive project partners took place in Byalistok, Poland. The European Development Agency is one of the active participants in the project and was involved in the various steps that will lead to the creation of a new manual for secondary industrial schools about alternative fuels. A part of the meeting was an evaluation of the questionnaire conducted in the past months by head-mechanics in car services of automotive brands in all partner countries of the project.

The questionnaire led to interesting conclusions such as confirmation that students of industrial schools should be taught more intensively about alternative fuels as well as that the system lacks specialists. There is also an urgent need for the education of new mechanics as car services do not have enough educated mechanics for electric or hybrid engines. The project team received a positive feedback on their intentions and already planned further steps to proceed in the upcoming months.

A second project meeting of coordinators for all project partners took place from 8 to 10 October 2018. This time, the meeting was organized by our Italian partner from the beautiful northern Italian city of Asti. During the meeting, there was a visit to the partner natural science lyceum and several very beneficial activities directly with the students there. However, the outcome of the meeting was to set the next project timetable and to review the performance of the outputs by individual partners. At Asti, we also started preparations for the third LTTA, which will be held in Portugal in April 2019. On this occasion, Czech teachers will present to their foreign colleagues their own experience of a socially-based type of bullying based on material differences among children.

From 15^th to 19^th of October 2018 a 5day long workshop took place as part of the Fun@Science project. Its aim was to introduce the technology of 3D printing to European teachers and to encourage them to successfully implement it as an element of day to day teaching. The training was organized by our partners from the TUCEP organization located in a gorgeous Italian city of Perugia. As part of the event the participants were introduced the history and evolution of 3D printing methods and above all experienced the practical part of 3D printing by taking advantage of 4 printers provided by our partners. Not only did they print but at the same time all of them were given the possibility to work with the necessary software and create their own printable shapes. At the end of the meeting group educational projects were prepared by the teachers. The quality of their ideas proved the workshop worthwhile.

The project partners of the Interreg Danube Transnational Programme, AgriGo4Cities, gathered together for the 5^th meeting in the city of Blagoevgrad, Bulgaria. The two-days meeting took place on the 23^rd and 24^th October 2018 and was organized by the Association of South-Western Municipalities.

During these days the partners presented their action plans and discussed about the final conference that will take place in Budapest, which will be organized by the Central Transdanubian Innovation Agency. Once the main points were discussed the partners had the chance to do three different study visits around Blagoevgrad: one in a flower garden, another in a winter garden in a Day Care Centre for children with special needs, and the last one in an experimental garden in a peri-urban area. 

To know further details about this project partners meeting or to learn more about AgriGo4Cities check out the project´s website: http://www.interreg-danube.eu/approved-projects/agrigo4cities 

The partners of a project oriented on adult education in 3D printing created an overview of all activities that have been organized since the launch of the project. Look what’s new!

At the end of September, 4 participants of our workshops went to northern Italy, where they met other workshop participants from Romania. During an all week long mobility, they had an opportunity to gain new interesting information about volunteering and volunteering activities in Italy, about the history of the region around the city of Carpi while visiting a former concentration camp, and about environmental care during a lecture in local protected landscape area. The whole programme was accompanied by a lot of interactive games and activities, during which the participants got to know each other more and found out their strengths and abilities regarding volunteering at the same time. There were also many intergenerational volunteering activities, for example, a musical lecture with elderly people suffering from Parkinson‘s disease. The whole programme was very interesting and successful and we can now look forward to other Romanian participants to visit us in Prague!

You can find more information about the whole project here: http://euda.eu/crea-t-y-v/