INTERREG Gastronomic Exchange Days
As part of the INTERREG program, we participated in a cultural and gastronomic exchange in collaboration with AIFED from Granada. INTERREG programs are financed by the European Regional Development Fund (Regional Fund). The first part of the exchange took place in Vilamoura, Portugal on the 7th march, where Andalusian specialities were presented to local restaurant owners and suppliers: For the second event, we travelled to Granada, Spain a week after to deliver a taste of Algarvian specialities: Both events have been a great success and we hope to be able to participate in similar programs more often in the near future!
Project Re-Start – Guidebook for Migrant Entrepreneurs
Brussels, Belgium (31/03/2023) – The Re-Start Project partners are proud to offer The Re-Start Guidebook for Migrant Entrepreneurs, available online on 31 March 2023. The Re-Start Guidebook is a short book full of refugee start-up resources to facilitate entrepreneurship and business development for refugees and migrants. In recent years, millions of refugees have come to Europe, many of whom have the skills, enthusiasm, and perseverance to be excellent entrepreneurs. When it comes to starting a company, however, refugees encounter unique challenges. The Re-Start project is an Erasmus+ co-funded project, brought to you by the partnership of four organisations: Welcome Home International (Belgium), Tropical Astral (Portugal), Indepcie (Spain) and Learning for Integration (Finland). Together the consortium has created four step-by-step guides with migrant-specific advice, localised resources and administrative obligations in all partner countries. Each country-specific guide is available in English and each country’s language (Dutch, French, Finnish, Portuguese and Spanish). The Re-Start Guidebook for Migrant Entrepreneurs takes you through ten chapters with everything you need to know to get started, from coming up with an idea and writing a business plan to learn about different business models and administrative steps. There is even a chapter on education, training and financing. Re-Start is explicitly designed for refugees and migrants. It is written at the A2-B1 language level, and each chapter contains vocabulary lists of technical terms and difficult words. The guidebook contains hyperlinks to resources in every partner country, including relevant authorities and helpful organisations. The Re-Start Guidebook for Migrant Entrepreneurs can be used online or in person, and is suitable for individual use or classroom context. The vocabulary lists and action steps throughout the book make it especially useful to equip teachers working with migrant language learners. Download the book in PDF (for Portugal) or view the flipbooks for each country on the project website and find out more on Facebook! Re-Start (Project No: 2021-1-BE01-KA210-ADU-000034932) is an Erasmus+-funded project.
Project Nutcracker Update – April 2023
The Erasmus+ project ‘NUTCRACKER – Learning by doing and helping’ is all about engaging the disengaged and connecting the disconnected due to the covid pandemic. With inclusion being a key element of the project, the aim is to build an inter-modal methodology that links small manual works and digital skills in order to promote the acquisition of skills that are relevant for the target group in the job market. Direct target groups that will be included in the project implementation are Trainers and teachers in adult education programs and adult learners at risk of social exclusion. At least 50% of the participants in the pilots will be women. Possible indirect target groups with interest in exploiting the NUTCRACKER project outputs and outcomes are VET teachers, trainers, companies with a focus on social work and adult education, researchers, youth workers, NGOs, students and people with migrant backgrounds etc. The main outputs of the NUTCRACKER project will be[1] the creation of training materials on best practices of every partner country with various topics under the methodologies of learning by helping and learning by doing in all partner languages,[2] an e-learning platform that will host the online course and training materials developed and[3] the organisation of ‘Training for trainers’ events in each partner country. These trainers will then support the final piloting events/activities for the end users to validate the training materials produced. By now, all partner organisations have executed research on best practises that can be found in their countries and provided guidelines and resources to inform about them.This material will be made available on the projects’ platform once it has been built. This E+ project with organisations involved from France, Portugal, Spain and Italy has started off in November 2022 and is expected to finish in March 2025. Want more info? Check the projects’ Facebook page for frequent updates and news around the topics of inclusion and diversity in education.
Re-Start Guidebook for Business Startups
The first English versions of the Re-Start Guidebook for business startups designed specifically for refugees and migrants are now online in flip book format. The guidebooks go through all you need to do to launch a company in Belgium, Finland, Portugal and Spain. Tomorrow we will have the translated versions and PDF downloads. Have a sneak peek now and let us know what you think: https://projectrestart.eu/the-restart-guidebook/
Workshop about Taxes – IRS (Portuguese Income Tax)
This workshop will be conducted in both Portuguese and English. Our news this year? Our workshops! Stay tuned and you will learn and gain vital knowledge on important topics when living in or moving to Portugal. In order to help all foreigners who move their lives to Portugal and work here and pay taxes, TropicalAstral have prepared workshops that will help you better understand what is necessary when living and working here, what the rules and obligations are, and what benefits there are for you in your host country. Several workshops will be prepared throughout the year, related to various topics such as taxes, services, driving licenses, social security and its benefits, and much more! Our first workshop is in April on the topic of the IRS and your tax return! On 20th April, for 4 hours, you will learn about everything you need to know to better understand and complete your annual tax return and prepare your IRS for the year of 2024 more efficiently. Did you know, for example, that you can save up to €3,000 a year in taxes if you do it right? Did you also know that as a resident of Portugal, you can reduce your IRS or even be refunded if you benefit from some tax deductions. Expenses you incur in 2023 related to education, health, real estate, child support, nursing homes, VAT, and other general family expenses qualify for IRS tax deductions in 2023, and may result in benefits for you when you file your declaration in 2024? In this workshop you can find out how to benefit from these deductions from the IRS and what the limits are for each category. You will learn, for example, how expenses with veterinarians, hairdressers, and the maintenance of your vehicle can, and should, be placed on your portal. All these tips will be passed on to you during this workshop and we are sure they will be extremely useful! During the session you can ask any questions you want and get all your doubts clarified. The cost of this workshop is €100 per person, and includes 5 learning modules related to IRS, the Finanças Portal, e-Fatura platform, and much more. The value of these workshops compared to what you can save and learn will be of great value to you! Join us and learn that managing your finance portal well will only bring you benefits! Places are limited, so we suggest that you contact us at: sofia@tropicalastral.com requesting more information and to register as soon as possible, the deadline for registrations is 15th April 2023. Let us help you understand the important rules and systems in Portugal. Contact us, register, and be surprised with what you learn, and with the improvements of the management of your accounts, witness the savings you can achieve!
Pro-Digita Project update – March 2023
The Pro-Digita project supports the intentional use of digital technologies in education and training. This includes developing digital pedagogy and expertise in using digital tools for instructors of adults, including accessible and assistive technologies, and the innovative creation and use of digital educational content. The objectives of the project are to increase the digital transformation of trainers and learners through the development of digital capacity, to improve the skills of trainers and learners in online education and to improve accessibility in online education for adult learning. Project results include a handbook to guide adult education trainers and learners towards online education and an online platform for trainers and trainees, to be used in online education. To increase interaction between adult learning organisations that will benefit from these outputs and other projects, a vast network of contacts will be built throughout the project timeline. At this stage, the creation of the didactic material in English has been fully completed and the translations to Portuguese, Turkish, Spanish and Lithuanian are finalised. Furthermore, our Online Platform has been created: This Platform already has a total of 16 learning modules, all of which add up to a total of more than 100 lessons. The categories include digital resources, language learning for Portuguese, Lithuanian, Spanish and Turkish etc. All modules have been tailored for adult learning. The next step will be to create a user guide for the platform as well as a manual to guide trainers and adult learners about online education. These guides will be translated into all partner languages. TropicalAstral, coordinator of this project, as well as all the partners will present and disseminate the project and its final outputs, sharing it on all available channels such as the EPALE platform, dozens of Erasmus groups on Facebook, all partners’ websites as well as on the project website. We therefore conclude that all the outputs we set out to create in this project are following the desired course of action within the project timeline. Don’t want to miss any updates? Like our Facebook page and visit the project website!
Skills4Integration Update – March 2023
With the project ‘Skills4Integration of Migrants, Refugees and Asylum Seekers’, we address the integration of adult refugees, asylum seekers and migrants who have notable disadvantages in literacy, numeracy and digital skills. Within the scope of the project, we are creating a web-based platform that contains numerous lessons on these topics, including interactive exercises and video lessons. Also, a training manual will be created to support volunteer educators of adult migrants and refugees. By this point, the creation of the learning material in English has been completed fully and translations to Finnish, Portuguese, Greek, French and Dutch are progressing. There will be 30 lessons for each topic – language learning, digital skills and maths – available with topics ranging from following a recipe, job application & citizenship over creating an email account, creating flyers & keyboard shortcuts to basic calculations, money management & statistics. All of them will be available both on the interactive Web APP and as downloadable PDFs that can be printed. The development of the Web APP interface has been completed and our staff has gone through training for uploading the interactive lessons. Uploads for the English lessons have been initiated and are now in full swing – to be followed by Portuguese and the other languages. Here are some insights on layout and handling of the Web APP: The next step will be to create transcripts for the video modules, which will include 30 numeracy modules and 30 digital skills modules. The responsible organisation for this result will be Innovation Frontiers IKE from Greece – supported by all other partners. Once finalised, they will be made available by TropicalAstral on the Web APP. Don’t want to miss any updates? Like us on Facebook and visit the project’s website!
ECOffee consumers – Kick-Off Meeting
What is the first thing that comes to mind when you hear the word coffee? If you are a coffee lover, you probably think of a cup of your favourite coffee that gives you that wonderful taste and feeling. The project “ECOffee consumers” does not want to change this feeling, we want to add a little extra! This project called ”ECOffee Consumers: Creating conscious coffee consumers with sustainable habits for enhancing the sustainable coffee industry” has partners from Cyprus, Greece, the Netherlands, Slovenia, Portugal, and Hungary. The latter is the project’s coordinator and the one who will lead us to achieve our vision and goals. Together, we will work so that you as an individual coffee consumer, or you as an individual cafe owner, can be part of a network where every cup of coffee contributes to a sustainable world and fight the environment and climate change. A legacy that we wish to leave to our future generations. For each cup of coffee, we will end up with Spent Coffee Ground (SCG). Decomposition of the SCGs leads mainly to methane, carbon dioxide and volatile organic compounds production. The project aims to provide significant high environmental, social, and economic benefits by promoting and enhancing sustainable coffee consumption. How does that sound? To enjoy your favourite coffee and at the same time benefit the environment – we call it a win-win situation. Further on in the project we will also reveal how this can happen. The project has just started with a kick-off meeting in Hódmezővásárhely, Hungary where the partners from Hungary, Greece, Cyprus, The Netherlands and Slovenia made presentations of themselves, their organisation as well as their defined responsibilities within the project that will last until 2024-10-31. All partners are highly enthusiastic about being part of this project and we hope that you will follow our steps towards our vision! Read more about the project and the partners on our website and make sure to follow us on Facebook and Instagram.
ProDigita – Project Meeting in Nazilli, Turkey
Between the 9th and 11th of January 2023, this transnational partner meeting (TPM) took place in Nazilli, Turkey. It was the third time for the partners to meet since the ProDigita project started. All partners were present to go through the work agenda. The Turkish partners, who hosted this meeting, provided us with an excellent work environment, as well as showing us their institution’s work and their country’s culture. They provided us with a wonderful dinner with Turkish food specialties – such as Pide and Köfte – and presented us with a dance show that represented the ceremony of the preparation for a traditional wedding in Turkey. Once the show came to its end, they invited us to join them on stage – creating an ice-breaker exercise for us all to participate and strengthen our working relationships and friendships. At the meeting, we were able to verify where we were in the activities that have to be carried out so far in the project and we could see and double-check the tasks, verifying that all the outputs are going well and we are within all the pre-established deadlines to finish the tasks allocated for each partner. We were able to successfully conclude all the objectives of this meeting.
Fire during Transnational Partner Meeting
Most people recognize the changes in our world from a scientific point of view, with changes in the climate, a global pandemic, and wars and conflicts in large parts of the world. We have all experienced the pandemic as one example and too many people experience wars and other conflicts on a daily basis which is so terrible that it cannot be described in words. This summer, we, the partners in the Skills4 Integration project, experienced a fire that raged during our transnational partner meeting in Vilamoura, Portugal. For some of us this was a completely new experience, but it was scary for us all. If this was due to climate change or not we can’t say but it was a horrific experience in many ways. We completed the meeting successfully in the end although we had to change our time schedule and go back to the accommodation and pack our belongings, in case of evacuation. In the light of this, we also discovered how important it is to have a clear and well-thought-out risk analysis in each individual project and try to be prepared for the unthinkable. So, besides all things we did regarding the project itself and all we managed to achieve during the meeting, we also ended up with new experiences that we want to share with all of you. So learn from our experience, draw up a risk analysis and risk log, revise it when necessary and don’t forget it in your files! The Skills4Integration project is proceeding according to plan. The content for the online web app is on its way and translations are being done as we speak. We are creating 90 modules of content within the topics of language, digital skills and maths in beginners, intermediate and advanced levels. The development of the online platform has started and the database is being coded. We expect the database to be finalised in December 2022 and the uploads of the content started in January, first with the English content and then the partner languages. The next transnational project partner meeting is scheduled forMarch 2023 in Cyprus. Our project website is ready, available in 6 languages.Also follow us on Facebook to receive more updated information about the project.