Annual Report 2018

President Statement

Dear friends and colleagues,

2018 has been a successful year for Future Worlds Center, implementing more than ten projects in collaboration with its ever-growing network of partners. Its three units Futures Design Unit, New Media Lab and Global Education Unit continue to run a fare share of competitive of global, EU and national projects (co)funded by the United Nations, European Commission and the Research Promotion Foundation.

More specifically:

	The Futures Design Unit has contributed many SDDPs for the MARINA and the R&I PEERS projects. It moreover, expands on its work for the Manifesto: Democracy in the Digital Era.
	The New Media Lab participates as partner in the MARINA H2020 project focusing on the development of a marine knowledge sharing platform for federating Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) communities. It has also contributed with its first two SDDPs within the R&I PEERS project, which is focusing on implementation and improvement of 7 Gender Equality Plans in R&I and research related organizations. The New Media Labcontinues its work in raising awareness on creating a better Internet for Children. In parallel NML works on creating an active and assisted living for senior people through its coordination of the SENIOR-TV project, while it contributes due to the combating of terrorism through its participation at the RiskTrack project.
	The Global Education Unit completed successfully its work at the Map Your Meal project, and focused on Global Education Goes Local (GEGL), MigratED, Youth of the World II, The Long Way to Europe and Global Education Goes Local.

Furthermore, an important milestone reached at the end of 2018 was that the number of SDDs co-organized by Future Worlds Center reached 100!

I invite you to read our Annual Report and come back to us with your reflections and ideas for possible future collaborations. We are thankful for the support of all our friends and network and remain inspired and enthusiastic in providing even a minor contribution towards the improvement and the strengthening of people and the society.

Yours faithfully,

Larry Fergeson
President of the Board

Board of Directors

Name	Position
Larry Fergeson	President
Andreas Shoshilos	Vice President
Veronika Sudi	Board Member
Elia Petridou	Board Member
Dr Harry Anastasiou	Board Member & Senior Scientist
Romina Laouri	Board Member

Auditors

Nearchos Tsangaris CAT, Authorised Accountant
Active Management
Thermopylon 73 Emmar - Andria Court 2007 Acropolis, Nicosia
Tel 22427327
Fax 22515125

Legal Advisors

Kikis Makrides
Legal Advisor
K. Maklaw Management Secretarial Services Ltd.
P.O. Box 22463
1522 Nicosia
Tel 22 313680
Fax 22 313903

Aims as in Constitution

1. Designing and execution of studies and research programs with future orientation in areas related to the human brain and learning, technology and social change, global society, conflict transformation and global peace.”
2. Development of new models of education based on recent advances in cognitive science and computing.
3. World-wide operations focused on international development, cooperation, humanitarian support, justice, transparency and advocacy of human rights, especially the right of education and the enhancement of inter-ethnic and international peace.
4. Organization of scientific, technical and cultural events or programs in issues relevant to the aims of the organization.
5. Organize, conduct and supervise seminars, congresses, conferences, workshops; deliver courses; offer educational and/or information services in the above sectors with the aim of sensitization, enlightenment or training of the modern active citizens.
6. Collaboration with universities, other institutions, organizations, and individual active citizens in Cyprus and abroad to promote the aims of the organization.
7. Serve as provider of information and consultant in academic, commercial, scientific and technical subjects.
8. Discovery, research, study, encouragement, support and promotion of new innovative ideas and methods, techniques, scientific technological, electronic systems and generally intellectual property.
9. Promotion of research in Cyprus and abroad in collaboration with other organizations, public or private, local or international for the achievement of our aims.
10. Promote Cyprus as a supporter of Development & IT education, scientific research and peace in the three continents around her, thus contributing towards consolidation of peace and prosperity in the wider geopolitical region.
11. Publication of material in subjects relevant with the aims of Institute

Global Education Unit

Global Education Goes Local (GEGL)

Overall objective To foster commitment of European citizens to take an active role towards meeting the challenges of the interdependent world we live in, based on awareness and critical understanding of their two-way relations with the issues of global development.Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are a universal call to action to end poverty, protect the planet and ensure that all people enjoy peace and prosperity (see here). GEGL focuses on the following SDGs: 5: Gender Equality 11: Sustainable Cities and Communities 12: Responsible Consumption and Production

Expected Results

• Awareness and commitment on global issues connected to SDGs 5, 11 and 12 significantly increased in 30 small localities;
• Citizens in 30 small localities and especially young people engaged in learning and action around global issues;
• Innovative approaches on engaging young people in global learning (connected to SDGs 5, 11 and 12) developed, tested and disseminated;
• Increased capacity and competences among stakeholders on local level to further utilise global learning with local communities;
• Improved understanding of policy makers and influencers at local and national level for the value and approaches of global learning

The Long Way to Europe

Overall objective To contribute to citizens' understanding of the EU, its history and diversity and to raise awareness of remembrance, common history and values and the aim of the EU.

Expected result: During the international events, young participants will learn, see, reflect and act about the lesson of our history. Thanks to the visit of museums and historical sites, the testimonies of witness and experts, discussions and debates within the groups, the participants will be able to tackle these issues and to focus about today situation in Europe. These reflections will be expressed by the young participants with draws, murals or graffiti. They will also be trained to share their visions and expectations about the future of Europe as active citizens and to share it with the tool called ‘Porteurs de paroles”. These innovative and participative practices of public place interaction will be used to promote directly in the streets the debate and the participation of the citizens about the European Values. These methods to raise awareness will be not only experimented during the International Events, but also organized by the youth in their communities (30 local events with the possible initiative of the European Solidarity Corps).

YoW

Youth of the World (II) Project is an 18-month-long Key Action 2 project supported by Erasmus+ of the European Commission. Youth of the World (II) intends to enhance the skills and performance of Youth workers and educators in general, through the promotion of innovative integrated approaches, such as inclusion, diversity, equality, and non-discrimination in youth activities. Particularly, Youth of the World fosters the development of social, civic, intercultural competences, media literacy and critical thinking, but also combating discrimination, segregation, racism, bullying and violence.

MigratED

Overall objective Dissemination of the good practice of Global Citizenship Education (GCE) activities on intercultural dialogue, migration issues and development based on human rights approach implemented on a local level by GVC and the Municipality of Bologna in secondary schools (project Amitie CODE – Capitalizing On DEvelopment and GCE laboratories implemented by GVC using audio visual tools). The project scales up these good practices by promoting an impact on the systemic level by training teachers and professionals in education on GCE issues – mainly human rights, development and migration issues – and on the use of digital and multimedia tools for boosting GCE issues. The action allows disseminating a more active use of innovative pedagogies and tools based on participatory methods, increasing teachers and learners’ digital competences.

New Media Lab

MARINA

The Marina proposal overall aim is to create an all-inclusive Knowledge Sharing Platform (KSP) catalysing and organising the convergence of already existing networks, communities, on-line platforms and services providing an online socio-technical environment that facilitates and stimulates the direct engagement of researchers, Civil Society Organisations (CSOs), citizens, industry stakeholders, policy and decision makers, research funders and communicators for improving Responsible Research and Innovation.

Objectives:

• Engage citizens and stakeholders in a highly participatory debate/consultation/process for federating Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) communities and initiatives, by supporting the Science with and for Society Community by facilitating new and lasting partnerships, cultivating joint visions and scenarios that connect societal needs with future expected advances in Science related to marine issues and their impact on the Societal Challenges.
• Create and validate a comprehensive networking and knowledge sharing platform (KSP) for relevant projects, service contracts, marine actors, educational institutions and citizens, to support and enable discussion, Mobilization and Mutual Learning, knowledge exchange and co-production of different communities related with the MARINA key strategic issues (environmental issues, sustainable development, policies and educational challenges) in the perspectives of the societal challenges and the RRI topics.
• Federate RRI communities including citizens in the KSP also by using an online platform for experimentation, training and knowledge and expectation capturing for facilitating the dialogue and shared understanding among scientists, policymakers, citizens and other stakeholders.
• Deliver guidelines and good practices for RRI assessment and promote them to CSOs, industry stakeholders, policy and decision makers, research funders, educational institutions to foster their adoption as a potential benchmark in setting-up RRI processes.
• Provide recommendations and policy options for RRI relating to marine issues at EU, national and subnational levels.
• Communicate and Disseminate broadly in Europe early in the project for enabling the MARINA activitiesand creating RRI and Marine issues awareness; and outside Europe through the partners and associated partners’ wide professional and social networks to promote the European leadership in RRI governance.

R&I PEERS

The R&I Peers project will be based on the concept of gender equality, that can be expressed as “women and men enjoy the same status and have equal opportunity to realize their full human rights and potential to contribute to national, political, economic, social and cultural development, and to benefit from the results”.

Objectives:

• Implementation and improvement of 7 Gender Equality Plans (GEPs) in R&I related organisations
• Smooth the gap of gender representation in decision-making and research-performing processes
• Maximise the impact and the efficacy of gender content into the research programmes

RiskTrack

The RiskTrack project aims to help in the prevention of terrorism through the identification of radicalisation by assisting in the identification and tackling of factors or indicators that raise a red flag about which individuals or communities are being radicalised and recruited to commit violent acts of terrorism.

The specific objectives for the universal learning environment are: The project will particularly aim to:

• study indicators of radicalisation in terrorism in order to create a formal risk assessment methodology in this field;
• develop a software tool with the ability to gather, represent, pre-process and analyse the information extracted from web sources;
• enhance the cooperation, knowledge sharing and awareness raising among judges, prosecutors, LEAs and other actors in the fight against terrorism.

Providing ICT-based formal and informal care at home (SENIOR-TV)

SENIOR-TV is a system that “resides” at home, in the living room at the homes of older adults, a place that is very familiar, using a domestic appliance that has always been with them, and that now gets “smart” in order to promote their activity, avoid their physical and cognitive deterioration, and keeping them in contact with their loving ones for as long as possible.

Overall objective

SENIOR-TV project will design and implement a multichannel intelligent platform for offering formal and informal caregiving services to older adults that live at their own homes, with special attention being paid at active prevention, and fostering a high-quality, long, and healthy life. Results, as illustrated here bellow, clearly reflect a trend: in homes of older adults, the intelligent TV must become the central ICT hub.

Specific objectives

• To use Smart TV in combination with Smartphones and tablets, as main interfaces; and to use other secondary peripherals (e.g. Wii, Kinect) for certain services.
• To identify the best technological opportunity for offering a caregiving system targeted at older adults during the first six months of the project. We will conduct research on the systems that were identified in Section 2.1, always having as a reference the technological platform SAM-TV, whose success was proven.
• To design formal and informal caregiving services targeted at older adults that live at their own home. From the very beginning, end user associations that are part of the consortium will be involved in the identification of needs, establishing priorities for an iterative development. Secondary and tertiary end users that have demonstrated its commitment14 to the proposal will form an integral part of the design process, facilitating its participation online in all cases where it is not possible to participate in person—the presence of partners from the same country pretends to promote their involvement.
• To design services aimed at helping older adults to keep in touch with friends, family, caregivers, and other members of the community. Thanks to the use of very simple interfaces in a familiar platform—the TV—the still existing digital gap between older adults and relatives and young caregivers will shrink (e.g. the communication via Facebook or Twitter could take place from a TV in the side of the older adult and from a smartphone in the side of their grandchildren or caregiver).
• To take into account the cultural and administrative diversity Southeast Europe, in terms of systems of care for the elderly. The participation of end-user associations from countries like Cyprus, Slovenia and Romania with the involvement of research institutions and companies with experience in this sector guarantees this fact.
• We will carry out pilot tests of the developed systems with a minimum number of 300 different users, distributed among the three countries in three different cycles, one for each year of the project. Each cycle is composed of a set of iterations, thus allowing for rotating the same devices (HTPCs, TVs, or any other element identified at the beginning of the project) among different homes in each country, and enabling an efficient use of the material for which financing is being requested in this proposal. The objective of structuring the project in several cycles is to facilitate the gathering of feedback in order to refine services, guarantee an efficient integration of all the services of SENIOR-TV, and identify particular elements of each country that may influence the final design of a holistic system.
• To develop a business plan that allows for the companies involved in consortium to start marketing the product SENIOR-TV no later than one year after the finalisation of the project. All the end-user organisations involved in the consortium will take part actively in the development of the business plan—including secondary and tertiary end-user organisations. Likewise, we will use the feedback gathered during the third cycles of testing pilots and direct opinion from older adults. This line of action will start from the first month of the project.

Epods

EPODS supports teachers/trainers in Second Chance Education in their continuous professional development. It assists these educators to set their own development goals, take courses and monitor their progress. In this way, the EPODS online professional development services enable teachers/trainers to maintain the high level of support to learners. E-learning courses and an e-learning creation tool further support the accessible and continuous learning of teachers/trainers.

Objectives:

• To promote European integration of professional development of teachers/trainers in second chance education
• To set up an organic / growing database connecting tools, schools, teachers/trainers and beneficiaries

Staff

Name	Position
Yiannis Laouris	Chief Executive Officer
Kerstin Wittig	Head of the Global Education Unit
Elena Aristodemou	Head of the New Media Lab
Andreas Drakos	Senior IT Manager
Andreas P. Andreou	Project Coordinator, Trainer
Aliki Economidou	Project Coordinator
Constantinos Tsiourtos	Public Policy & Communications Director
Helene Josephides	Project Coordinator
Dora Heracleous	Project Officer
Aspasia Ksidea	Graphics Designer
Stella Philippou	Financial Director
Marios Podinas	Business Manager
Eliza Danenfelde Kirpe	Intern
Jordan Kent	Intern

Equipment and Offices

In 2018 Future Worlds Center has moved to a new office building at 36E Gregori Afxentiou, in Ayios Dometios.

Its premises are fully furnished with extra office spaces for visiting associates and part-time personnel. The office areas include a conference room, a seminar room, a TV studio, one study room with a small library and two small kitchens and 4 restroom areas. The internet has been upgraded to have to ISPs serving our facilities.