Rural areas suffer from a lack of opportunity and professional creation for youth, which is nowadays aggravated by other challenges that must be considered as a whole and holistically when talking about the development of regions: the absence of vocational training centres for the acquisition of qualifications, the lack of professional orientation, the difficulty to find a job, the concern about climate change, the isolation as a consequence of the pandemic, etc. Fresh ideas introduced in an innovative way are necessary in this respect. Youth is the future and people want to believe in a better future.
The project will organise approaches among its participants to provoke participation and reflection. Its materials will promote the use of storytelling and non-formal education methods to give young people a more realistic view of reality, of their possibilities and of what they can do and how to do it.
The project results will establish strategies and guidelines (for decision-makers and practitioners in the youth field) that will encourage youth participation in the promotion of their territories and communities with the support of technical staff from social entities. The project will address the need for measures for local authorities and civil society organisations that can enable higher levels of civic participation in rural areas among the younger population.
To this end, the project will generate different educational materials for these actors on youth participation in rural areas which will be the basis for the creation of a toolkit for technical staff and civil servants. These tools will include information, recommendations and guidelines to carry out workshops with young people towards their participation as active citizens, which will also help to build a common visual identity of each area that will be shared thanks to interactive maps composed of audiovisual elements about the nature, history, environment and culture of each area.
Dates: 01/12/2022 al 31/01/2025
Partner entities:
Plataforma por un Valle del Tiétar en Transición (Coordinator)
ALPINE PEARLS (Verein zur Förderung eines nachaltigen Tourismus mit umweltfreundlicher Mobilität)
- Raise awareness of environmental care, and look for alternative models and experiences that can become examples and provide opportunities for young people.
- Support local authorities and municipalities in developing and implementing innovative participatory methods to raise awareness of tourism and environmental issues.
- To open a dialogue between local authorities, municipalities, experts in the field of tourism and culture, and youth centres and organisations and their members towards the retention of youth in agrotourism related work.
- Obtain useful information from the territories and transform it into visual materials or results built in a cooperative way from the experience of young people and professionals, which can contribute to the development of each area and to the construction of a spirit of identity.
- Strengthen youth work strategies and support them in counselling and local animation, while training youth professionals towards the modernisation and innovation of the services they offer.
- Assess and generate a record of young people’s needs that can be used to design materials and products for educators and youth workers to carry out activities that address those needs and empower young people to play an active role in the community.
- Generate a learning process that allows young people to get to know their territories, promoting a common identity of those who live in them and the pride of belonging to each area, while reinforcing their self-esteem, autonomy and encouraging their desire to follow professional, work and personal development itineraries related to their areas.
- Provide young people with interactive and visual means to make themselves visible and express their needs, expectations about their areas and allow them to share them, giving added value to their skills, while addressing and dealing with the needs of all members of the community.
- Encourage the democratic engagement of young people and community work to involve them in the development and promotion of their own territories, but with the sure support of the different local actors.
- Encourage new processes triggered by the connections with the EU by making young people more aware of the conditions of the territory of the territory they live in, while realising its similarities with other EU territories.
- Project start (December 2022)
- Transnational co-ordination meetings (February 2023, July 2023 and November 2024)
- Training for project developers (January 2024)
- Multiplier events (December 2024 and January 2025)
- Completion of the project (January 2025)
