PRO RURAL EUROPE II Erasmus Project

Project Title

PRO RURAL EUROPE II

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: Civic engagement / responsible citizenship; Rural development and urbanisation; Cultural heritage/European Year of Cultural Heritage

Project Summary

The project was, in a sense, a follow-up initiative to the previous network-building project within the framework of PRORURE 1. It was successfully implemented in its main features and objectives, but also experienced certain limitations as the Corona pandemic progressed and therefore had to be extended by 9 months until 31 August 2021. Of the six transnational meetings planned until the outbreak of the pandemic, only three such events could be held with the presence of all ten partners from Belgium, Bulgaria, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Spain. The meeting with the Italian partners planned for 13-15 March 2020, in the initially particularly affected region of Bergamo, of all places, had to be cancelled at short notice. This then took place on the same date as a first Zoom conference, a form of communication among all project partners that was continued and further developed until the end of the project. It turned out to be a stroke of luck that the second transnational meeting on 04-06.10.2019 was already about training in forms of digital communication.
The planning of an early implementation of a teaching and learning event in the first project year (and not at the end of the project, as in the previous project PRORURE 1) on the topic of cultural diversity in Europe (05.-09.2019 in Cluj/ Romania) was also a good decision. The fact that this meeting could then be held with the Romanian partners as planned was important for the dynamic course of the project.
The first meeting of the project, which started on 01.12.2018, took place on 01-03.02.2019 as a kick-off event. In addition to content-related inputs (among others from a Member of the European Parliament, representatives of various Europe-committed initiatives and some participants) and project implementation-relevant agreements among the participating partners, the second part of the meeting was about the consolidation of feedback on a template prepared by an installed “technical team” on the question of the objective and further procedure on the topic of organisational development of the network. The general opinion of all partners was confirmed – and the project justified – that it was necessary to strive for a form of institutionalisation by the end of the project in order to be able to be present in public and with decision-makers with the issues developed so far for a prosperous development of rural areas in Europe.
Accordingly, a processual concretisation of this idea was the focus of the further course of the project (such as the development of a statute), which was professionally accompanied by Open Europe Consulting (OEC), beginning with a third transnational meeting with the Spanish partners on 22-24 November 2019 in Avila, the last presentation event of the project, and concluding after the following eight Zoom conferences with the official foundation of the non-profit association PRO RURAL EUROPE e.V. according to German association law. In the meantime, this association has been registered at the local court in Siegburg and has the appropriate bodies (general meeting with an elected European board of directors). This means that the continuation of the project’s work is in prospect and that it will be possible to integrate further European countries into the network.
At the same time, during the project implementation period, the participating organisations carried out a large number of on-site activities in the sense of the project’s objectives and reported on them at the meetings, which also led to the desired multiplication effects in the sense of the dissemination of “best practices”. For example, the presence of the Belgian partner organisation at the launch of the campaign “Ich bin Europa- y tu tambien” (I am Europe – y tu tambien) at the Federal Assembly of the KLB Germany resulted in a similar campaign being carried out by the ACRF in Belgium.
With the promotion of the development of civil society involvement in the rural regions, a rural movement emerged in Slovakia. With events, public relations work and publications on the current situation and development trends in neglected rural areas in Europe, the project partners have raised awareness in their countries of an urgent need for action. This also includes the question of the socio-ecological design of the European “Green Deal”, which was discussed with representatives of European institutions and initiatives, such as COMECE. For this purpose, the contacts to decision-makers and opinion leaders at European level developed in the previous project were further expanded

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 145566,37 Eur

Project Coordinator

Internationaler Ländlicher Entwicklungsdienst e.V. & Country: DE

Project Partners

• CHRETIENS DANS LE MONDE RURAL
• Katholische Landvolkbewegung Deutschland e.V.
• Asociatia Generala a Romanilor Uniti
• ACRF -Femmes en milieu rural, asbl
• Forum krestanskych institucii
• Associazione Rurali Reggiani
• Ogolnopolskie Stowarzyszenie Chrzescijanskich Organizacji Wiejskich (Polish Association of Christian Rural Organisations – PACRO)