Pilgrims Accommodation and New Host Expertise in Rural Areas Erasmus Project

Project Title

Pilgrims Accommodation and New Host Expertise in Rural Areas

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for adult education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2018

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Overcoming skills mismatches (basic/transversal); ICT – new technologies – digital competences; Social entrepreneurship / social innovation

Project Summary

The presence of cultural and religious itineraries and the related pilgrimages tradition in all the main world religions, can play an important role in promoting European Cultural Heritage and support intercultural dialogue and mutual understanding among people. Pilgrimages also represent an important resource for the economic and tourist development of territories they cross, which are often rural areas. It is therefore important for hosting structures along pilgrimage routes to be able to provide good quality welcome services and behaviours to hosted pilgrims-tourists.

PANHERA therefore aims to provide enhanced competences for people working in hosting centres in rural areas to provide better services and develop innovative training methods combining different methodologies to enhance transversal skill development of learners, especially coming from different backgrounds and marginalized area; enhance digital competences to the benefit of structures and the increase of tourists; promote pilgrimage routes and linked tourism in rural areas; improve the knowledge of tourists-pilgrims profile and tourism linked to religious itineraries; create potential for the economic development of the interested territories and increase of job opportunities; raise of awareness of local, regional and national decision makers on the project topic.
A total of 54 participants (9 per partner) representing people managing and working in hosting structures in rural areas crossed by religious routes, as well as other organizations and actors involved in services supporting the hosting and presence of pilgrims-tourists will be selected as direct beneficiaries for this experience. All of them coming from 6 partner regions in Italy, Spain, Romania, Bulgaria, Norway and Turkey crossed by inter-confessional historical pilgrimage routes.

Following the project approval, all 6 project partners will organize kick off events to launch the project at local level, followed by an official project Kick Off meeting to be held in Craiova (Romania) in 2018.
All the partners will implement at local level a field research, aiming at analysing the state of the art at local level, mapping hosting centres and identifying good and bad practices. Soon after the identification of learners and trainers to be directly involved in the project, training activities will start, combining a mix of different methodologies, especially informal and not formal education, learning by doing approach, peers exchanges, transnational virtual trainings, study visits, including a specific group training meeting involving all partners representatives and trainers, to be held in Craiova (Romania) in 2019, and 3 blended mobilities for adult learners to be held in Vidin (Bulgaria), Lalin (Spain) and Oslo (Norway) in 2020. The project will develop: a training course, on-line related training guidelines, including both theoretical explanation and training materials, and concrete data and experiences, in order to provide also concrete examples; a common system certifying welcoming competences and quality of the hosting centres; a web-based open education platform, collecting all the outputs and materials produced during the project, also allowing pilgrims to evaluate their satisfaction on hosting centres managers welcoming competences, as well as providing data on pilgrims presence; policy guidelines specifically targeted to regional, national and EU decision makers, expressing the position and experience of partners organizations and territories involved in the project, illustrating lessons learnt and solution proposed, with the objective of increase their awareness on the project topic, and develop better policies and strategies. The project will close with an International final conference, to be held in Parma (Italy) in 2021, followed by National dissemination events in all the other partner countries, aimed at promoting and disseminating final project results and intellectual outcomes produced during the project and raise awareness on the project topic.

All the activities and outputs will be widely disseminated in order to maximize the impact and reach a wide number of indirect beneficiaries, for an average of 1000 indirect beneficiaries per partner to be reached.
Benefits of PANHERA project will have long-lasting effects resulting in an increase of the attractiveness of territory wher hosting centres are located and consequently in tourist and economic development of involved communities, stimulating new businesses and job creation in rural area.

Project Website

http://www.panhera.eu

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 245216 Eur

Project Coordinator

Center for dialogue between sciences and theology-University of Craiova & Country: RO

Project Partners

• GAL DEL DUCATO SOCIETA CONSORTILE SARL
• Pilegrimssenter Oslo
• Isparta Governorship
• Fondatsiya za Regionalno Razvitie
• Asociación Desenvolvemento Rural Terras de Pontevedra Norte