ATALANTA (Support Equality and Advancing Inclusion in Marine and Maritime sector) is an Erasmus+ cooperation partnership that brings together a complementary consortium of four partners across three countries to tackle a central challenge in the blue economy: persistent gender disparities that limit women’s access to training, career progression, and leadership. ATALANTA advances equality and skills through inclusive, tech-enhanced education, pairing an accessible curriculum and immersive VR/AR simulations with structured mentorship and networking so women can build confidence, technical competence, and safety awareness in real-to-life maritime contexts.

At its core, ATALANTA co-creates an inclusive curriculum and three VR/AR real-world scenarios that mirror maritime operations (e.g., navigation, emergency response, port activities), and delivers the “Women Rise Package”—a blended program combining mentoring, peer networks, and targeted capacity building for educators and organisations. The project embeds accessibility-by-design and FAIR principles, publishes open resources via a dedicated e-learning platform, and aligns evaluation and sustainability plans to drive long-term institutional uptake.

Key innovations include:

• A six-barrier framework (cultural, legal, training, employment, retention, leadership) guiding needs analysis and curriculum design.

• Three experiential VR/AR simulations that accelerate skills acquisition and improve safety-critical decision-making.

• The Women Rise Package: structured mentorship, a database of women professionals, webinars, podcasts, roundtables, and regional networking days.

• Accessibility, multilingual delivery, and open-access resources hosted on a learning platform to maximise reach and reuse.

• A robust evaluation and sustainability approach with defined milestones and an exploitation roadmap for policy and organisational adoption.

Hybrid pilots and collaborative workshops will validate the training in real settings—pilot delivery in Denmark, a collaborative learning workshop in Cyprus, and consortium activities in Greece—ensuring the solutions are effective, scalable, and relevant to industry needs. Through close collaboration with maritime institutions, training providers, and stakeholders, ATALANTA aims to set new benchmarks for inclusive maritime education and gender-responsive workplace practices across Europe.

SEABILITY INNOVATIONS participates as Work Package leader for WP5 (Dissemination, Communication & Sustainability), directing the project’s visual identity and shaping ATALANTA’s external visibility, stakeholder relations, and long-term impact.