Includ-ed, red europea de educación inclusiva

Summary

Rural Europeans struggle with several problems that are common to numerous countries, such as the difficulty of achieving the specialization of new rural realm job opportunities, few enterprise initiatives, and the inability and lack of qualification to assess the advantages of natural and tourism resources. The Agronatur partnership has the participation of different sectors and territories (five countries), with partners involved in rural development, professional training, enterprise support, cooperation experiences and programmes such as LEONARDO, LEADER, GRUNDTVIG and INTERREG.

The main goals are:

• • Quality improvement of the European professional training system, adapting and integrating the innovating results and contents, obtained in the former projects;
• • Strengthen the cooperation between different countries and institutions;
• • Transference of these contents for the new social, economic and languages realities;
• • Foment the equal opportunities and to be able to reach training;
• • Adapt the innovating solutions to other sectors and/or potential beneficiary groups;
• • Contribute for the rural development, in a sustainable perspective;
• • Involve the entities and the social local, regional and national actors.
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We intent to increase the transparence and competences’ recognition, including those obtained in non formal procedures, also improving the co-operation between several entities which operate in the professional training field, education, social agents, enterprises and other European organisms. Among these results we can name the followings:

• • Translation of the curricular plans into the project’s partners languages;
• • Organization of an experimental training action (with around 10 trainees per partners), in order to test the transference and adequate to the new contents;
• • Edition of a training manual, having in account new adaptations resulting from training pilot-actions;
• • Conception and edition of a CD-ROOM about the thematic to transfer, introducing contents that support the learning throughout the NTIC;
• • Creation of a web page, with information about the project, activities, goals and results obtained.

Project object:

The objectives described for the project are:

• a) Improve the quality of the European system of vocational training, by adapting and integrating the results and innovative contents, which were previously obtained from local, regional and national level vocational training from Leonardo da Vinci projects.
• b) Strengthen the cooperation among different countries and organizations, also supported by former results and experiences taken from previous cooperation projects and programmes;
• c) Identity the needs of the involved countries and regions’ beneficiaries;
• d) Select the innovative contents and suppress the identified needs and analyse the viability of its transference;
• e) Transfer these contents to new social and economic realities, proposed in the partnership;
• f) Transfer the results to new languages;
• g) Foment the equal opportunities and the access to training;
• h) Adapt these innovative solutions to other sectors and/or groups that are potential beneficiaries;
• i) Contribute to the rural development, in a sustainable perspective;
•  j) Evolve the entities with the local, regional and national actors.
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We hope that the accomplishment of these objectives can contribute to the attachment of the rural region’s younger population, promoting new qualification opportunities and making them capable of creating their own job. This fact, soon, will fight the problems and obstacles of these regions (mentioned in the previous point 1. Rational and Background), especially to fight the depopulation and ease the specialization of the new job opportunities, which are emerging, and assure the balance between the search for services and goods related to the rural mean and the respective quality on the offer.

This desired vocational qualification improvement and the creation of new jobs will contribute for the raise of the economic index of the local population, based upon the natural endogenous resources, reinforcing this way, the sustainable development.

Methodology

The project had common activities developed by all partners, ensuring the transference in the different countries involved. Within their region of intervention each partner established local and regional collaboration agreements with other organizations, getting a wider dissemination capacity and reaching the final individual beneficiaries.

Target

Rural population, especially:

• • Unemployed women,
• • Young population unemployed after a compulsory school,
• • Adults that abandon agriculture or in process of abandoning it,
• • People that somehow have physical deficiency or incapacity.
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Tourism sector and leisure organizations, agriculture, restaurants, environment, social services, vocational training (training centers and enterprises), Local Action Groups, trainers and public entities, are also considered beneficiaries.

Good practice achievements

The project transferred innovative contents originally developed within Leonardo da Vinci programme (pilot-projects), under Active Tourism and Nature Interpretation thematic.
The training contents were translated in 3 more languages (Estonian, Romanian and German), adding to the initially versions in Portuguese, Spanish, English, Slovak and Italian.
During the project, each partner implemented a Pilot-course, training and testing the technical contents directly with the target-groups.
 
Project documents:

• - Brochures
• - Collaboration agreements
• - Basic Language Guide
• - Training Manuals on Active Tourism and Nature Interpretation
• - Dissemination evidences
• - Minutes of Transnational meetings
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Available on http://project-agronatur.com  

Project partners and other stakeholders

The partnership is constituted by 7 entities from 5 countries:

ADRAT, Development Association of Alto Tâmega’s Region (Portugal) – project promoter; non profit private entity, founded in 1990. On the quality of Local Action Group (LAG) have been managing the implementation on the Alto Tâmega the LEADER, LEADER II and LEADER + programmes. Aiming the rural development has worked in several national and communitarian projects within several programmes: ILE, SIMC, PEDIP, PROCOM, RIME, PME, INOVJOVEM, POEFDS, AGRIS, INTERREG IIIA, INTERREG IIIB, INTERREG IIIC, ON – Operação Norte, LEONARDO DA VINCI.  www.adrat.pt

E.N.T.E.R. – European Network for Transfer and Exploitation of EU Project Results (Austria) – E.N.T.E.R. is a non-profit making association and supports the dissemination and exploitation of developments, products and results from EU funded projects. The network aims to connect project consortia, organisations and people working or interested in the same thematic field. The support of EU strategies through the dissemination and exploitation of project results funded by the EU will be of benefit for all European citizens. Additionally to the services of the network, E.N.T.E.R. also acts proactively as project promoter, project partner and expert to foster dissemination and exploitation standards within the EU.  www.enter-network.eu

MTÜ Siksali Arendusselts (Estonia) – Siksali Development Centre is a non-profit organisation in South-Eastern Estonia, acting on the field of rural development and adults training. Founded in 2002 has been participating in several European projects: GRUNDTVIG, LEONARDO DA VINCI, JOINT ACTIONS, VISBY among others. It is partner o the Estonian Environment Centre and coordinates projects of Environmental Education on the Võru County.  www.siksali.ee

ADESPER, Association for Sustainable Development and Promotion of Rural Employment (Spain) – it is a non profit entity, including several social interlocutors working in local and rural development. It acts in various autonomous communities of Spain (Castilla y León, Navarra, Asturias, Galicia and Cantabria) and in Portugal. Its main objective is to promote the sustainable development and achieve the participation of the groups with more difficulties to obtain a Job in rural areas and in far away regions. www.adesper.com

Diputación of Palencia (Spain) – entity of public administration in the province of Palencia, local, which provides assistance, legal cooperation, economic and technical assistance to municipalities in the province, and also cooperates with the Autonomous Community and the Central Government. The main areas of action are: economic development and employment, women, youth, culture and publications, tourism, sports, artistic heritage, environment, agricultural services and social services, among others.  www.dip-palencia.es

ADRAL, Regional Development Agency of Alentejo SA (Portugal) – it is a non profit private agency, created in 1998, constituted by 68 public and private entities of various activity areas, from all over the region. The main objectives of its work are contribute for the valorisation and development of the regional productive basis, promote innovation and qualification, reinforce the international status of Alentejo region, stimulate initiative for the creation of innovative social mobilization forms and institutional cooperation for development. www.adral.pt

CEFIDEC, TRAINING AND INNOVATION CENTER FOR DEVELOPMENT IN THE CARPATHIANS (Romania) – it is a public institution founded in 1994, subordinated to the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development and specialized in issues regarding the mountain agriculture, economy and environment. Its activities have as objectives the training of farmers and specialized personnel who live and work in the mountain areas, implementation of innovative projects, collaboration with research and training institutions. It is a member of the European Association of the Mountain Regions (EUROMONTANA) and of the National for Mountain Rural Development (ROMONTANA).  www.cefidec.ro

Evaluation

There was evaluation of the training contents, dome by the final beneficiaries, according to the pilot-courses held.
Also, the project implementation and management was evaluated internally and progressively by the partnership.