Green Initiatives in Rural Areas – GIRA Erasmus Project

Project Title

Green Initiatives in Rural Areas – GIRA

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 2020

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Civic engagement / responsible citizenship; Rural development and urbanisation; Environment and climate change

Project Summary

93% of Europeans consider climate change to be a serious problem and say they have already taken at least one measure to combat it. The Green deal is the European Union’s new growth strategy aimed at improving citizens’ well-being. For us, civil society structures, it is crucial to implement, at local level, concrete actions to ensure a fair and inclusive energy transition. It is not necessary to carry out large-scale actions, but to foster a dynamic leading to innovation and to give rural citizens both cognitive and practical tools. The final objective is twofold: to unite the citizens in rural areas around this Green deal and to encourage them to stay in the countryside where they come from in order to be full-fledged actors of change.
It’s one of the hot topics for the coming decades and the rural areas are directly affected. So what to do, what do others do, what approaches do we have, what way can we get, what is possible even with a small budget, how can citizens be involved, what is specific for rural areas in comparison to urban places? Many questions that need answers. Climate change is one of the policy areas that needs international / European cooperation. Climate change does not stop at the borders. It one of the best examples where European cooperation is necessary. This way we would like to go. Learning about “Green Initiatives in Rural Areas” (GIRA), that’s the driving motor for our SP, we put it in our project title.
We have identified already in all our six partner countries what is happening around climate change and a new green policy. We come from all the different parts of the European Union North (Sweden), West (Netherlands, France), Center (Germany), South (Greece) and East (Poland) representing member states with various backgrounds.
The results expected during the project is in one hand that good ideas from very different contexts in six countries will be possible to be used in all countries. When learning from others all participants will be able to create new way of working with Green Deal issues in practice and also to work with broad dissemination of this ideas to people working with rural development and climate change. The aim is that in every participating country we start small projects and activities with results that can be visible for the society in all. We will not simply compile ideas and different approaches, which of course needs to be done in the first place but we will create a real European “toolbox” (“Green manual”) to inspire, impulse and implement new actions in rural areas on green initiatives. This new project will allow our structure, as a local reference on rural issues at the European level, to target a new topic and a broader audience. We will also have to set up actions in an eco-neighbourhood in our regions jointly with populations from different cultures and nationalities. The topic of the Green Deal is so high on the agenda and the need in rural areas is corresponding to that. We need answers and we need support and advise how to tackle climate change on the big and on the small scale. The SP opens this box and goes into a topic that is expanding almost every day.
The SP will set up one local development group in each country that will be involved in European learning and innovation activities in rural development on climate change issues constantly.
These groups are the motor of the SP and they will drive the SP forward and will be the link to the European dimension and the European sharing in the international context of transnational meetings. They will have much interest and involvement in gathering knowledge and specific national examples and approaches on the content, learning new activities, kicking-off new initiatives and learning from other contexts in Europe.
During the transnational meetings they give each other ideas, input and new knowledge about how to work with green policy approaches and new initiatives in rural development and they will also be educated in how to implement new activities and initiatives connected to the content. The idea is a combination of “meeting, exchanging, thinking, developing and implementing” – bringing together existing approaches and experiences and on top of this develop try new ideas and innovative strategies for future implementation.
Our dissemination activities will be addressed to various groups of people in all participating countries. The most important target group of dissemination activities on local and regional level are citizens of rural and small towns local communities. The local actions aim to disseminate the project results (via the “Green Manual”) all participating organizations and the project participants will reach out to different circles of the rural local communities to rural citizens, associations, local authorities, NGOs, local stakeholders etc. Dealing with climate change and green policy on such a bright level will have tremendous impact on all people, groups and organizations invo

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 127420 Eur

Project Coordinator

Europahaus Marienberg & Country: DE

Project Partners

• POLSKA FUNDACJA IM. ROBERTA SCHUMANA
• To Spiti tis Evropis sti Rodo
• MAISON DE L’EUROPE DES YVELINES
• Europahuset Gävleborg
• Learn for Life