Based on the fact that the causes of many of the accidents at sea are due to deficiencies in education and training of seafarers or disregard for current standards and regulations, the SOS project aims at improving safety at sea through improved education and training. It will by this way also overcome the lack of qualified personnel at Officers of Watch level and higher in the sea transportation sector in partner countries and help young unemployed people to find good and well paid jobs in the shipping industry as Officers Of Watch. It will therefore develop compatible, complete and up to date education and training programmes which include all the international standards for education aspects. In order to develop the intended programmes the project will apply rapid prototyping approaches. It will also take advantage of the outcome of several European education and training including Leonardo pilot projects. Expected results are represented by two educational programmes, one for Deck officers and one for Engineer Officers. Each programme will contain an internationally recognised higher national diploma plus a pathway to the final year of appropriate degree programmes. The project will also produce a handbooks, one for instructor and one for cadets/students. The content of modules and units will be made available on floppy disk and DVD/CD. The valorisation and dissemination activities will be developed by the active involvement of target groups, continuous dispatch of information to interested parties, awareness activities through writing papers and articles, seminars and workshops, the use of partners web sites and the development of the project web site. Target groups are represented by unemployed young people and those working in operation and management of ships particularly in SMEs in partner countries.