RURALITIES aims at playing a structural role in contributing to the current Africa-EU partnership, which is designed to build on this historical relationship, and to create a framework for deeper dialogues between the two regions in a vast panoply of fields, such as rural development.
RURALITIES enables the EU and Africa engage in regular developments with a focus on the project’s capacity building programme, embodied by ‘RURALITIES Commons 2050 Learning Framework’ (RURCOM), a solution-oriented programme to guide rural community-led empowerment along all the steps of the innovation process, also considering existing initiatives that struggle with problems or simply need revitalization.
The project ‘Climate smart, ecosystem-enhancing and knowledge-based rural expertise and training centres’ (RURALITIES) delivers an ecosystem-enhancing and climate action driven expertise and learning framework. This is done via a multi-point approach and rooted in the recruitment, preparation, training and coaching of 1.000+ facilitators distributed in all participating countries, for a variety of tasks (e.g., trainers, facilitators, role models, hub coordinators, etc.). RURALITIES proposes to ideate, implement, futureproof, validate and deliver the aforementioned expertise and learning centres via real-scale practicing in 6 simplified rural socio-ecological systems (SIMSES) e.g., demonstrators, 2 in Italy, 1 in the United- Kingdom (UK), 1 in Slovenia, 1 in Spain and 1 in Romania.
RURALITIES coordinates identified actions of local, regional authorities in supports of rural innovation in regions and economic sectors where rural innovators are not yet engaged in a relevant network. RURALITIES coordinates identified SIMSES networks promoting rural innovation solutions whilst establishing innovative multipoints ‘RURALITIES Hubs’ of expertise and training on rural innovation. This is done via coordinating action for the managing authorities and regional bodies influencing regional and national policy instruments in Italy, the UK, Slovenia, Spain and in Romania.