YOUTH RE-WORKING RURAL – Fostering youth entrepreneurship and local development in rural areas through co-working and spaces reconversion Erasmus Project

Project Title

YOUTH RE-WORKING RURAL – Fostering youth entrepreneurship and local development in rural areas through co-working and spaces reconversion

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 youth

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2017

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Entrepreneurial learning – entrepreneurship education; Labour market issues incl. career guidance / youth unemployment; Rural development and urbanisation

Project Summary

Youth Re-working Rural project brought together 7 partners from 6 EU countries (Norway, Italy, Spain, Greece, Latvia and Slovenia), which decided to cooperate transnationally to tackle common challenges. Project involved rural areas characterized by different pre-assessed economic vocation but experiencing common territorial challenges such as: economic reconversion from traditional sectors to services sector and knowledge based activities, low population density, decrease of inhabitants due to migration towards big cities, brain drain of young people, quite high youth unemployment rates for most of the partners. The economic reconversion has furthermore caused the presence of empty, abandoned buildings previously used for economic activities, that need to be reconverted and exploited economically to contribute to local development and youth employment. Considering that young people with sense of initiative cannot find easily in rural areas appropriate spaces and professional networks to improve their competences and self-employment potentialities, the project’s main objective was to promote co-working spaces as a concept to reconvert abandoned spaces and to encourage entrepreneurship and self-employment among young people as a new form of employee-driven innovation (EDI).
Its specific objectives were:
– to promote employment and entrepreneurship in European rural areas by increasing young people capabilities to reconvert empty spaces to host co-working and hubs activities;
– to promote youth skills and competencies for the development of co-working spaces/incubators focused on the economic vocation of the territories;
– to foster youth entrepreneurship, networking, training and new opportunities for local development.
Project involved directly in training activities more than 100 young people, aged for the majority between 20 and 30 years, interested in the topics covered by the project (co-working, spaces reconversion and youth entrepreneurship and business networking) and in personal development. Project innovativeness was based on direct involvement of associated partners and local development stakeholders in project activities.
Project activities included: management, evaluation and monitoring activities; tasks dedicated to the production of the Intellectual Outputs and achieving the set objectives and outcomes, measures for dissemination, exploitation and provision of sustainability, a blended learning activity. Project foresaw the production, use, validation and promotion of 6 intellectual outputs: state of the art and map of opportunities (IO1), EQF of the co-working start-upper (IO2), training program (IO3), e-book for the start-up and management of co-working spaces (IO4), virtual community for local development through co-working (IO5), best practices and open challenges booklet “Fostering youth entrepreneurship and local development in rural areas through co-working and spaces reconversion” (IO6). IO6 is extremely important to guarantee sustainability of the project and continuous work on the issues covered. All intellectual outputs are uploaded on the website and on Erasmus + project results platform; moreover IO3 is available also in a video format on You Tube.
C1 activity was fundamental to achieve in a concrete way project objectives as youth worked on the reconversion of existing abandoned spaces and delivered real business models exploitable at EU level. Main feedbacks are collected in a video and in IO6.
Dissemination activities were designed ad hoc for the new virtual generation and to assure transferability of products and results. Key sustainability measures have been foreseen by the partners to assure use of projects results and follow-up actions.
Main results achieved are:
– youth living in rural areas with newly acquired or reinforced key competences – including basic, transversal and soft skills, entrepreneurial and digital skills – of the co-working start-upper;
– unemployed youth with increased opportunities of self-employment and employability thanks to the relevant skills gained for exploiting potentialities of territories through the reconversion and management of spaces,
– youth with reinforced open up mindset for cross-sectorial cooperation allowing greater synergies with other professionals/workers/stratuppers and across different business and local development actors, including members of the Virtual Community.
Apart for benefits on young people, the project has a short and long term impact on the other actors involved. Project partners have reinforced their cooperation opportunities and their ability to train young people and start co-working activities, stakeholders have increased their awareness on the importance and need of co-working for rural areas.
Local communities involved will benefit as youth increased capabilities to exploit potential of territories will lead to socio economic development through skills retention and virtuous circulation of ideas.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 187097,82 Eur

Project Coordinator

Studiesenteret.no & Country: NO

Project Partners

• STEP Institut, zavod za psihologijo dela in podjetnistvo
• INSTITUTE OF ENTREPRENEURSHIP DEVELOPMENT
• BIEDRIBA EUROFORTIS
• ASOCIACION AEI CLUSTER DE TURISMO DE EXTREMADURA
• CIAPE – CENTRO ITALIANO PER L’APPRENDIMENTO PERMANENTE
• Montefeltro Sviluppo Società Consortile a Responsabilità Limitata
• FUNDACION ECOÁNIME