Europe and the cross border area of Kattegatt – Skagerack is facing the problem of an increasing lack of interest among children and young people to study Science, Technology and Mathematics. The lack of interest is striking among girls. In a long term perspective this negative trend will cause an absence of innovative power within the future generations. Norway, Denmark and Sweden have made independent efforts with different measures at national levels to create changes of attitudes within this area.

The project SMIL (E) is a cross border contribution to bring the national actions together with the following objectives:
- Create innovative learning methods, material and environment for the ages of 1-19 years with focus areas such as gender and ICT.
- Create a better collaboration between School, Trade and industry as well as Research
- Create an area for communication/ gathering forum for the cross border area within learning Science, Technology and Mathematics.

The direct result of the project is a digital platform for the cross border area of gathered competence and knowledge consisting:
- Developed, tested and evaluated innovative and “ best practice” based learning methods, material and environment
- Evaluated methods for a better collaboration between School, Trade and Industry and Research.
- A created network between schools, companies, competence centers and universities